New Normal
by KelseyGallant
Summary: Daniella thought that once she returned to the 21st century, everything would go back to normal-or at least as normal as life could be in a new town, with a new set of memories and a new connection with her biological siblings. But she soon learns that danger may still be out there... and that "normal" can change in the blink of an eye. (contains spoilers, including for books 7&8)
1. Chapter 1

PART ONE

It was totally weird going back to my normal twenty-first century life after being in 1918. Getting to know my other family. My birth family. The Romanovs.

Even after all that time we had in the time hollow to recuperate, it was still hard to transition from my life as Anastasia in 1918 to my life as Daniella, almost a hundred years later. Even though I'd only been Anastasia for—what, a day? Not even a day?—I still had her entire lifetime of memories inside me. Memories of her family—my family. Mama and Papa and Olga and Tatiana, and all our loyal servants.

The ones we hadn't been able to save.

It was hard remembering what had been important to me in the twenty-first century. I'd liked making people laugh—that was something that was consistent across both lives. But other than that? I hadn't had any siblings. I'd had friends back in Ann Arbor, but things had kind of fizzled out with them even before we moved. I hadn't made any friends in Liston yet, because we'd literally _just_ moved there when I went over to talk to Chip and Jonah, and then I'd been walking down the sidewalk with them and Katherine, and then Gavin had grabbed us all and taken us back to 1918.

I'd been just a normal, goofy middle-school girl back then. I'd enjoyed playing pranks and telling jokes and being social. I'd enjoyed watching TV and looking at funny cat videos on YouTube and going on my phone. I hadn't enjoyed doing my homework, and I'd started blowing it off since seventh grade started. I'd lived with my parents, obviously, and I'd loved them, but I'd really just kind of taken them for granted.

And then I'd gotten all the mysterious phone calls from the mysterious boys who'd seemed to know more about me than I'd known about myself. And that had gotten me thinking about my birth family, and trying to investigate. But I hadn't really found anything out until we'd gone whizzing through time.

I'd been _terrified_ when Gavin had grabbed us and made everything around us disappear. There I was, with four kids who I didn't even know, and we were—who even _knew_ where we were? The kids had told me we were traveling through time. And then we'd ended up in some sort of garden, and some guy with a gun was screaming at me in a foreign language, and I was taken inside some old-fashioned house and brought to a bedroom, where some sort of ghost-girl was sitting on a bed. I'd felt a strange pull to the ghost-girl, like I just _had_ to go over and sit where she was sitting. So I had, and the moment I'd connected with her, it was like I _was_ her. I was Anastasia Romanova, and I was seventeen, and I was reading to my sick little brother Alexei—even though Alexei was somehow also Gavin, the kid who'd tricked me and brought me there.

It was weird at first. I thought it had to be a dream. And I didn't understand any of it. But then Jonah and Katherine and Chip had come, and explained how I'd grown up as Anastasia, been kidnapped and turned into a baby, and then been adopted by my parents in the twenty-first century.

I also found out that I—along with my entire family—was supposed to be executed that very night.

Then I'd gone on with the rest of the day as Anastasia, basically, as Gavin, Jonah, Chip, Katherine and I all worked together to try to come up with a plan to save my family. In the end, we hadn't been able to save everyone. Just me, Gavin/Alexei, my sister Maria, and our kitchen boy Leonid. As well as Chip, Jonah, and Katherine, of course.

Jonah and Gavin had both been shot, so they'd needed to stay in a hospital in the future for a while so they could recover. The rest of us had stayed in a place called a time hollow, where time didn't really pass at all. We'd waited and talked and waited some more, and watched old videos of our family during happier times, and tried to teach Maria and Leonid everything we could about living in the twenty-first century. Then this time traveler guy named JB, who was apparently a friend of Katherine and Jonah and Chip, had come to send us all back to our normal lives. Before he'd had a chance to do that, though, Leonid had grabbed his Elucidator (the device used for traveling through time) and gone back in time again, and JB had sent Maria and me back to rescue him.

So, as you can imagine, trying to go back to being regular old Daniella again wasn't very easy.

We ended up on the sidewalk, right where we'd been when Gavin grabbed us. Even though we'd spent a day in 1918 Russia, and then what could have been days or weeks or months in the time hollow, no time had passed at all for the world around us.

As planned, Jonah, Chip, and Katherine all immediately started bolting toward their houses. The rest of us—Gavin, Maria, Leonid and I—all rolled for safety under the cover of the thick bushes lining the street.

"Are you all right, Lenka?" Gavin whispered to Leonid, using Leonid's familiar name.

"Yes," Leonid answered. "But…just to let you know…I think I'm going to take Katherine's advice and go by 'Leo' here."

"Whatever. It's your choice," Gavin whispered back.

Leo. I would have to get used to calling Leonid Leo. Well, that was okay, because he would have to get used to calling Gavin and me by our twenty-first century names rather than Anastasia and Alexei, or the grand duchess and the tsarevitch.

We only had to wait for a moment more before a car drove down the road and pulled up to a stop right beside the bushes where we were hidden. "That must be her," I whispered. "Angela." Angela was a grown-up friend of Katherine, Chip, and Jonah, the only adult in our modern time period who knew about time travel. Maria and Leo were going to live with her for the time being—although I hoped that at some point in time coming up, I'd be able to convince my parents to let Maria move in with us. She was my sister, after all, and JB had said that I might be able to persuade them if I could convince them that having Maria around would make me more responsible.

Cautiously, I stood up and dusted myself off. The window of the car rolled down and I saw that I was right—it was Angela in the driver's seat. None of us—except for Gavin, briefly—had ever actually met Angela, but Katherine and Chip had shown us videos of her in the time hollow. After Leonid and Maria had gotten over their initial surprise that she was black (because growing up in 1918 Russia, they'd never actually seen anyone who was black), they'd watched her in several different situations and determined that she seemed like a decent person to live with.

"Hi," Angela said. "I'm Angela. You must be Maria, Leonid, Daniella and Gavin. Well, actually, I remember you, Gavin."

Angela's voice was perfectly friendly, but Gavin hung his head and didn't look at her. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Sorry for being such a jerk and siding with Gary, you know, that day at the time cave. And I don't know if anyone told you this, but I'm also the one who stole your Elucidator. I'm sorry about that too."

"JB did tell me that," said Angela kindly. "And he also told me that you've had a change of heart and are now on our side, fully and completely. And that if the opportunity arises, you'll be ready to help the time agency catch Gary and Hodge. _And_ about how brave you were in that cellar."

Nobody spoke for a moment, and I think all of us were thinking about the horrors we'd witnessed and been part of down there in the cellar, with all the bullets flying and people dying right and left. I shivered.

"It's okay, Gavin," said Angela. "I forgive you. We're all on the same team now."

Leo was the first to speak after that. "Wow," he said, looking at Angela's car. "Is this what all cars are like in the future? In this time period, I mean?"

Angela laughed. "Pretty much. You'll see. We have different brands and colors and models, but they're all pretty much like this. Not at all like the cars you're used to, I'm sure."

I tried to imagine what it would be like looking at the twenty-first century from Leo's or Maria's eyes. A lot had happened in the ninety-some years since 1918. And if I really thought about it from my Anastasia perspective, rather than my Daniella perspective, I could see how strange modern life would seem. Probably about as strange and futuristic as time travel and Elucidators had first seemed to me.

"Why don't you guys get in, and I'll take you home," said Angela. "To your new home, I mean. Gavin, Daniella, do either of you need a ride?"

"Um…" Mom and Dad would kill me if they saw me getting out of a car driven by some random woman they don't even know. And there'd be no way to explain who Angela was and how I knew she was safe without bringing up all the time travel. And even if I did tell them about time travel and who I really was and how I knew Angela and Gavin and Maria and Leo, they definitely wouldn't believe me. They'd just think it was some really, really elaborate prank, or that I was making up ludicrous stories in an attempt not to get in trouble.

"No thanks," I said. "I'll just walk. I don't live that far away."

"I'll take a ride," said Gavin. "I mean, if you're willing to give me one. Otherwise I can just call someone to pick me up."

"No, it's fine," said Angela. "Hop in."

I hugged my brother and sister before they got in the car. I hugged Leonid too, even though that would have been considered _so_ improper before, when he was just a servant. But now he was my friend. Our friend. "We'll keep in touch," Gavin assured me. "You and I have each other's numbers, and once Leo and Maria get cell phones, we can call and text them too. And remember, I'm probably going to be transferring to your school."

"Which is the school that Jonah, Chip, and Katherine go to. Right?"

"Yeah. We can all hang out together there."

I nodded. Then they all got in the car with Angela, and the car drove off, leaving me alone.

Alone with my thoughts again as I walked the nine-tenths of a mile back to my new house.

 _Here I am, in a whole new town, in a whole new state, in pretty much a whole new life._ I was a different person than I'd been when we lived in Michigan. And I'd already made some really good friends—and found a brother and sister that I hadn't even known I'd had. _Okay, now what am I going to say when I get back to the new house and have to talk to Mom and Dad?_ It felt like I hadn't seen them in ages. And, technically, I hadn't, but they had just seen me, what, like thirty minutes ago?

I still had the Google Maps printouts showing how to get from my new house to Chip's house. I started following the directions, backward this time, to make sure I'd know how to get home.

It was almost eerie, walking home in the near-darkness, taking into account all that had just happened. I was jumpy, glancing around at every new noise, half-terrified that someone was going to pop out of the bushes with a gun and try to shoot me. Or maybe that those two guys who'd tried to kidnap us and bring us to the future, Gary and Hodge, would jump out and grab me.

Did they still want me? Would they come after me again at some point in time? In one of our Skype calls to Jonah and Gavin—while they were in the hospital and the rest of us were in the time hollow—Jonah had mentioned how Gary and Hodge had vanished completely and even the time agency didn't know where they had gone. He'd also said that JB had told him that the time agency would be keeping a close eye on all of us to make sure nothing happened.

But still. I knew the time agency was the place JB worked, and that they were committed to keeping all of us safe, and keeping time safe. And I knew that they could travel through time, obviously, and probably had a boatload of really advanced, futuristic technology that could help protect us.

But if Gary and Hodge were able to hide so well that the time agency couldn't find them… what else were they capable of?

My cell phone rang in my pocket and I jumped about a mile. I'd forgotten I even had it with me. You can't use a cell phone in 1918 _or_ in a time hollow, so I hadn't thought about my phone since… well, since shortly after we'd arrived in 1918, I guess. I _had_ been thinking about using it to call 911 back when we'd first landed, and the guard had been pointing his gun at me, but I hadn't had the opportunity, and once I'd become Anastasia and learned what time period we were in, I'd realized that my phone was pretty much useless.

But I was back in the twenty-first century now. And twenty-first century Daniella never went anywhere without her phone.

I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that it was Mom calling. I swiped my finger across the screen and answered "Hi Mom."

"Hi honey. Everything's ready now. All your boxes are in your room, so I'd like you to come back and start unpacking."

"I'm on my way." As I spoke those words, I turned on to Robin's Egg Lane. My new street. "I just turned onto our street."

"Okay. See you soon."

"Yep." I paused . "Love you."

"Love you too," Mom sounded surprised, and I knew why. Before my trip to 1918, that hadn't been something I'd said to my parents very much. Of course they _knew_ I loved them. Of course I told them _sometimes_. But when I hung up the phone, I usually just said something like "Bye" or "Later."

Losing my other family had changed that. Who knew how much time any of us had left before we died?

With this morbid thought, I turned into my new driveway, walked past the moving van, where the movers were still hauling our stuff, and headed up the front steps into our new house. When I saw Mom unpacking a box in the living room, and Dad moving one of our kitchen chairs over to the newly-set-up table, it was all I could do not to throw my arms around them and yell, "Mom! Dad! I'm so glad to see you! I've missed you so much! I'm so glad you're both alive and that we don't have to worry about all being hauled off in the middle of the night to be executed!"

I didn't do any of that. But I did say, "Hi Mom! Hi Dad! I'm back!"

"Your stuff's in your room," said Dad.

I went upstairs and started unpacking.


	2. Chapter 2

The very next day was my first day of school. I made it to the bus stop with a couple minutes to spare, and waited, keeping my eyes out for Gary or Hodge or anyone else who looked suspicious. I was pretty sure they wouldn't try to grab me when I was standing at the bus stop surrounded by other kids, but you never know. Soon enough, the bus came rolling up and I got on, looking around for Jonah or Chip or Katherine. I didn't see any of them, so I sat down in a random seat next to a random girl and struck up a conversation. It comforted me that I could still do that. That was something the old Daniella was really good at.

It didn't take long before we arrived at Harris Middle School. I had to go to the main office at first, so I could get my schedule. Then I went to my homeroom class, where, to my delight, I saw Chip. "Chip!" I exclaimed, waving as I made my way over to him.

"Daniella! How art thou?" Chip blushed and shook his head. "I mean, how are you? Sorry."

"Chip's a little bit of a weirdo," said the boy sitting next to him. "Half the time he's perfectly normal, and then he'll go on a tangent about medieval weapons and start talking like he's some ancient king or something."

I tried not to smile as I exchanged a knowing glance with Chip. Little did this boy know that Chip _was_ an ancient king—some British royalty from the 1400s.

Just like I was Russian royalty from the 1900s. I wondered if my speech would give me away.

The day went by pretty normally after that. I went to all my classes, met all my new teachers, and introduced myself to all my new classmates. I ate lunch with Chip and Jonah and some of their other friends (not Katherine though, because as a sixth grader, she had a different lunch period). I didn't make any mistakes that would give away anything about time travel or my other identity—although I did have to look away when a girl in my English class introduced herself as Tatiana.

I called Gavin the moment I got home. "How was your first day at school?" he asked me.

"Okay," I shrugged, even though he obviously couldn't see me over the phone. "How was your first day _back_ at school?"

"Eh. It was whatever. Good news, though. I did talk to my mom, and we made a deal. I'm going to be starting at your school next week!"

"Yay!" I did a little happy dance. "I hung out with Chip and Jonah at lunch today. And met some of their other friends. It was fun."

Gavin and I kept talking, first about school and how weird it was to adjust to living our twenty-first century lives again, then reminiscing a little about stuff we'd done growing up together in twentieth-century Russia. Finally, he had to go, so I promised to call him the next day, and we both hung up.

And that was when I noticed Mom looking at me with a very strange expression on her face.

 _Oh, great! I didn't even notice she was there! Did she hear me talking about Papa making those little toys for us? Or about that book I'd been reading to Alexei that we never got to finish? How am I going to explain this? Maybe say I was practicing role-playing for some school project…_

"Hi Mom," I said, trying to act normal. "Um… do you know what we're having for dinner tonight?"

Mom just kept looking at me weirdly. "Were you speaking _Russian_?"

Oh. Oops. I don't know when Gavin and I made the transition over from English to Russian—probably some time when we were talking about our childhood. But, yeah, I guess I should have paid a little more attention to what was going on around me.

"Um," I said, giggling nervously. "Yes, actually. My, uh, my new friend Gavin speaks Russian, and he… he's been teaching me."

Mom still looked suspicious. "You seem to have learned pretty quickly. How long have you known this Gavin?"

Good question. I just kind of sat there, because I didn't know how to answer her. I'd been talking with Gavin on the phone for over a month, but I'd only physically _met_ him the day before, which to me felt like several days or maybe weeks ago. And of course, I'd known him as Alexei my entire life as Anastasia.

I finally just shrugged and went for my best technique—distraction. "Oh, hey, you wanna know what happened at school today? Third period was kind of funny, because…" I rambled on and on, making up a story about something that had happened during my (actually pretty boring) day at school. And by the time I was done, Mom still looked a little suspicious, but she didn't say anything else about me speaking Russian or about Gavin.

Days passed. I got used to my new house, my new school schedule, and—to some extent—my new life. I hung out with Chip and Jonah at school, talked with Katherine a few times after school, and made some new friends as well. I talked with Gavin on the phone every day—although I made sure to go outside where Mom and Dad wouldn't be able to overhear me. I finally got a call from an unfamiliar number that turned out to be Maria, and she and I talked for a long time. She told me about the college classes she'd started taking, and how she'd managed to convince everyone that she's just a normal Russian immigrant, and how she and Leo had met Angela's boyfriend—a guy named Hadley—who was from the future and really nice. We also tried to come up with a way that Maria and I could get together without my parents being suspicious. Would it be too weird if I just one day said, "Hey Mom, Dad, I met my birth sister! Come on, I'll introduce you to her"? They'd probably have a lot of questions about how I'd met Maria and how I knew she was my birth sister and everything, and so far I hadn't been able to come up with a story that they would believe.

I was still brainstorming ideas of how to get Maria to live with us the day everything changed.

It was an ordinary school day. Mom and Dad had already left for work (they'd been going in early ever since we'd moved to Ohio, I guess trying to make a good impression on their new bosses or something), and I was standing in front of the pantry, trying to decide what to have for breakfast.

Then, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, the pantry disappeared.

So did everything else. The kitchen, the table, the walls, even the floor I was standing on—gone. I was floating through black nothingness.

Floating through time.


	3. Chapter 3

PART TWO

I freaked out. For one, I'd never traveled through time by myself before. The first time, I'd been with Gavin and Jonah and Katherine and Chip. And yeah, I'd been totally freaked out that time too, because I'd had no idea what was going on, but at least I hadn't been _alone_. And then I'd been with all of them the next time as well, plus Maria and Leonid, when Gary and Hodge had tried to send us to the future. And I'd been with various combinations of people when Katherine had rescued us all from the cellar, and when JB had sent us to the time hollow after that, and when Maria and I had gone back to rescue Leonid.

There was something comforting about having someone with you when traveling through time. Otherwise, it just felt...lonely. And scary.

And speaking of scary…

Why was I traveling through time in the first place? Jonah and Katherine and JB had all assured me that my part in traveling through time was over. Even though it hadn't been JB and his time agency friends who had sent me back to live out that day as Anastasia, I'd still successfully done it, closing the gaps left by Gary and Hodge when they'd stolen me out of time in the first place. JB had said that everything about 1918 was all fixed now—even Leonid being taken out of time a decade too early. So there would never be a reason for me or Gavin or Maria or Leo to go back in time, ever again.

Which had to mean that the thing I'd been worried about was coming true. Despite all the time agency's protection, Gary and Hodge were kidnapping me again.

 _Dear God_ , I prayed. _Please don't let Gary and Hodge succeed. Please let me get home safely again. Please don't let anyone else die._ It kind of surprised me that praying was such a natural response. I'd always believed in God, but I'd never thought about Him much. My parents and I didn't go to church regularly, and I hadn't been raised to be religious.

But in my life as Anastasia, God had been a centerpiece of my life. Praying had come as naturally as breathing. And it helped. I was still freaking out, but at least I knew God was with me.

But what in the world was I supposed to do now? The last time Gary and Hodge had tried sending us to the future, we'd at least had the toy soldier Elucidator, and even though it couldn't do much, Jonah had gotten it to turn us around and spoil Gary and Hodge's plan. I didn't have an Elucidator with me. I had absolutely no way of preventing myself from turning back into a baby and being sent off into the future to be adopted by some random people who only wanted me because of my DNA.

But wait… _was_ I turning back into a baby? Last time, I'd been able to feel myself getting younger. I could tell that I was getting shorter, and that my teeth were falling out and baby teeth were growing back in their place, and that a lot of other things were changing too. But this time…

This time I still felt thirteen.

I was so relieved that I wasn't getting younger that it took me a couple seconds to realize that I had to come up with a plan. I could do that. I didn't have much to go on, but as long as I was still thirteen I could think of _something…_ maybe I would try to confuse Gary and Hodge, trick them into revealing more than they would want to. That had worked with Gavin back before we'd actually met each other, when we were just talking on the phone…

I didn't get any farther than that in my planning, because right then, I reached the point in time travel where I just started bumping around and I couldn't think and it felt like my whole body was being ripped apart.

And then I landed.


	4. Chapter 4

Noise. Lots of noise, all around me. People were yelling and screaming and saying stuff loudly, and I couldn't make out anything in particular. Had I landed in the middle of some crowded street or something? Or maybe a futuristic orphanage? At least I could tell that I was still thirteen. Or, well, at least I could tell that I _wasn't_ a baby.

I opened my eyes and jumped a little. Right in front of me was the face of an unfamiliar boy. He looked as startled to see me as I was to see him. And—were both of us lying on the floor?

"What's going on?" the boy asked me.

I almost laughed. He thought _I_ would have any idea? "I don't know," I said. "Who are you?"

"Brendan. Or—yeah, I guess I'm still Brendan. Who are you?"

It was a weird response, but everything about this situation was weird, so I didn't comment. I just said, "I'm Daniella."

Brendan sat up, and so did I. That was when I saw our full surroundings. We were in some windowless room—a time hollow?—with a bunch of other kids all around us. Some of them were lying on the floor. Some of them were getting up. Some of them were talking, some seemed to be yelling. Everybody seemed confused.

I turned to my other side, where a girl with short brown hair was just sitting up. "Do _you_ have any idea where we are?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I think we just… I think we just traveled through time," she said, almost as if she didn't expect me to believe her.

"I know we did," I agreed. "Have you traveled through time before?"

She nodded. "Once. Well… and I guess one other time, when I was a baby. But I don't remember that time. What about you?"

"Same. Well, actually, I've traveled through time more than once, but… wait, so are you one of the kids Gary and Hodge stole?"

The girl nodded vigorously. "Are you?"

"Yeah!"

"I think we all are," said Brendan, looking around. "I recognize you from the time cave," he added to the other girl. "Haley, right?"

"Yes. You were in my group. We interrogated JB together. Brandon?"

"Brendan."

Haley turned to me. "And… I don't remember your name."

"I wasn't in the time cave," I told her. "I'm Daniella." Dread was creeping over me again. "So… if all the kids here are the same ones Gary and Hodge stole… don't you think that has to mean they're stealing us again?"

Brendan looked uncertain. "Well… I thought… didn't JB send them to prison? Could it maybe be Second doing this? I know he said he wasn't going to mess with our time anymore, but I don't really trust him…"

"Gary and Hodge broke out of prison," I said. "And they sent me and my brother back to our original time period with some of the other kids, and we all almost got killed, and then they tried to turn us into babies again and send us to the future. We escaped from them, but…" I made a face. "They escaped from the time agency."

Brendan and Haley both stared at me in horror.

"I thought I was done," said Haley. "I went back and lived a couple days in my original identity, and then JB let me go back to my normal life. I thought I wouldn't have to worry about any of this ever again."

"I spent five years in my other identity," muttered Brendan. "And I've been having enough trouble as it is remembering that I'm a thirteen-year-old twenty-first-century black kid, rather than an eighteen-year-old seventeenth century Native American."

I kind of wanted to ask how Brendan had originally been a Native American—since he sure didn't look like any pictures of Native Americans _I'd_ seen—but now wasn't the time. I remembered something else he had said.

"Who's Second?" I asked.

"Second is the reason I was stuck in the 1600s for five years," said Brendan. "Well, sort of. It's a long story, but basically he sent me and this other kid, Antonio, back in time before JB was ready for us to go, and then he totally messed everything up and did a lot of really weird stuff with time. I guess his goal was to make another dimension of time, which he succeeded in doing, but he risked all our lives by doing it. Our whole village—including me and Antonio and JB and Virginia, I mean Andrea—would have died in a fire if Jonah hadn't come back and rescued us all."

"You know Jonah?" I exclaimed. "Wait—Jonah should be here, right? And Chip? And Gavin?"

"I'm right here," said a voice behind me. I turned around and saw Gavin walking toward us.

I stood up and hugged him. "Do you know any more about this than we do?" I asked. "Did Gary or Hodge ever say anything about bringing all the missing kids to a time hollow?" I gasped as a new thought struck me. "Wait—are Gary and Hodge _here_?"

"No," said Gavin, looking around as I released him. "I don't think so. I think it's only the thirty-six kids. But this doesn't make sense. Why didn't they turn us into babies while we were traveling through time? Now that we're all here, we can work together. We can come up with a plan to overpower them, or outsmart them, or, I don't know, somehow contact the time agency or something."

"I know…" I bit my lip. "I was thinking about that too. That's why I was sort of hoping… maybe it isn't Gary and Hodge who brought us here? Maybe it was someone else?"

"Like that Second guy Brendan was talking about," said Haley. "He doesn't sound any better than Gary and Hodge."

"Is there any possible reason the time agency would bring us here?" a girl asked quietly, coming up next to me. "Or maybe just JB? Maybe he wanted to talk to us all together or something?"

Brendan frowned. "It's _possible_ ," he said, looking around. "But where is he? Wouldn't he be here with us if that were the case?"

I looked around too, trying to spot JB. He would be taller than everyone else, probably, so he should be easy to find. But I was so much shorter than everyone else that it was hard to get a good look, since almost everyone was standing now.

Wait—was that Chip over there?

"Chip!" I yelled. Chip turned and saw me. He motioned to somebody next to him and then fought his way through all the people to come stand by me, Gavin, Brendan, Haley, and the other girl.

"Hi," he said when he reached us. "This is my brother, Alex." He introduced us to the boy who'd followed him. There was no doubt they were brothers. They looked a lot alike. "Alex figured out that all the kids in this time hollow are the same ones from the plane," Chip continued. "So we were trying to find Jonah. Have you seen him?"

We all shook our heads.

"Jonah was the kid who kind of took charge back in the cave, right?" asked Haley. "The one who opened the door and took the Elucidator and everything?"

"Indeed," said Chip. "Out of all thirty-six of us, I'm pretty sure he has the most experience with time travel, so we figured he would be the most likely to know what's going on."

"There might be a perfectly logical explanation for all of this," added Alex.

"I'm not worried about it being _logical_ ," I said. "Gary and Hodge kidnapping us would be logical, but it would also be really bad."

"Good point," said Alex, seeming surprised that I'd thought of that. "Well, then, there might be a perfectly logical _and_ nonthreatening explanation for why we're here, but that's just a hypothesis."

"Well, let's find Jonah and find out," I said. I cupped my hands around my mouth. "JONAH!" I yelled, as loudly as I could.

A bunch of kids stopped talking and looked at me, but then went back to their own conversations. I waited, but Jonah didn't seem to be coming over.

"Has anyone seen Jonah?" I yelled. Aside from the people clustered around me, it didn't seem like anyone was paying attention.

"Guys! Can you stop talking for a moment? This is really important!" Again, only the people nearest to me stopped and looked over.

"I got this," muttered Chip. "Hey! Listen up, everyone!" he barked.

I don't know what the difference was—maybe that Chip had used a different tone of voice, or that the other kids could tell he had once been a medieval king, or that he actually _sounded_ like a medieval king, or someone who was used to being obeyed—but just about everyone fell silent this time.

"We need to figure out what's going on," Chip continued, still speaking in his loud, authoritative voice. "Jonah, are you here? Do you know what's going on?"

There was no reply. One boy muttered, "I haven't _seen_ Jonah."

"Okay," Chip continued. "So maybe we were wrong, what my brother and I thought originally. We thought the people here were the thirty-six kids from the plane that Gary and Hodge crash-landed in the twenty-first century. But maybe not. We need to figure out who's here and who's missing. First of all, is there anyone here who's _not_ from the plane that Gary and Hodge crash-landed? Raise your hand if you're not one of the missing kids from history."

I looked around. Nobody was raising their hand.

"All right. Let's get into some sort of order—lines or a big circle or something, so we can all see each other, and count how many of us are here. Then we can try to figure out _why_ we're here."

Most kids started doing as Chip said—heading toward the walls of the time hollow, to get in a big circle. One boy said defiantly, "Why should we listen to _you_?"

"Because he has a plan, stupid!" snapped Gavin, holding up a fist and stepping toward the boy. "Now get in the circle."

The boy looked surprised, and stepped back to join the kids lining up along the wall. Gavin stepped back too, and stood next to me. "Maybe I went a little overboard," he whispered when I raised my eyebrows. "But that's Peter Rice. He was one of the kids I used to hang out with, back before… you know. 1918. He used to get me in a lot of trouble."

It was actually surprising how quickly all thirty-six of us—or thirty-five, or however many of us there were—managed to assemble ourselves into a circle along the walls. I scanned the faces of all the kids around me. I was pretty sure I recognized a girl from my math class, but other than that, I didn't know anybody. And Jonah was definitely not there.

"There are thirty-five of us," a girl with curly red hair spoke up. "I just counted."

Now it looked like a bunch of other kids were counting too. It was much easier to count now that we were all in a circle. I did my own count and came up with the same number everyone else was coming up with. "Thirty-five."

"So Jonah's the only one who's missing?" Chip asked, looking stunned. "Are we sure he's not just, like, behind someone or something? Jonah!"

Everybody turned around and looked behind them. Nobody replied.

"Um, okay," said Chip. "But… the other thirty-five of us are definitely the kids from the plane?"

Everyone was nodding. _What could this mean_? I wondered. I remembered that there'd been one other time when thirty-five of the thirty-six kids Gary and Hodge stole had been together—the time I'd been the one missing. Was Jonah's absence what was protecting us, maybe? Did Gary and Hodge not want to make a move until they had all thirty-six of us together? That didn't really make sense. They'd tried turning us back into babies and bringing us to the future when it was just me, Gavin, Chip, Jonah, Katherine, Maria, and Leonid. But maybe… maybe…

None of this was making any sense.

"Does anyone know _anything_ about where we are or why we're here?" a boy across the circle from me called out.

"We're in a time hollow," Chip replied. "Kind of like the cave we were in, back when we first found out about time travel. It's a place where time doesn't really exist."

"Well, technically it _exists_ ," said Alex. "Otherwise nothing would be able to happen. It just doesn't exist in the same way it exists in real time. Our time. It's kind of like its own dimension."

"Wait, so are you saying we're in a different dimension right now? Like the one Second made?" asked a boy with pierced ears.

"No, Antonio, he said it's a time hollow," Brendan spoke up. "Like that place we went when Jonah saved us from the fire, where JB let us decorate the walls? Remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

"We're getting off topic," said Chip. "Why are we here? Does anybody know that? Does anyone know who sent us here? Does anyone have any ideas?

A girl with thick, wavy dark hair raised her hand. I recognized her as the one who'd suggested that it might have been JB who'd sent us here. Chip pointed at her. "Go ahead."

"I know a lot of people are saying it was Gary or Hodge who sent us here," she said, in a quiet but steady voice. "And that might be the case. But I was also thinking, could it maybe have been the time agents who sent us here, to keep us safe from something we don't know about? Or to keep time safe? Or… do you think it might have been time itself that brought us all here somehow, to prevent a paradox from happening? That kind of thing has sort of happened before."

"What kind of paradox would be so big that _all_ of us would have to come here?" Peter asked. But he didn't seem like he was sneering this time. He just seemed like he wanted to know.

"I don't know," the girl admitted, shrugging. "It's just an idea. I don't know if that's why we're here or not."

"It's a good theory," said Chip. "Any other theories?"

A girl with long brown hair and gray eyes timidly raised her hand. Chip pointed at her, and she spoke even more quietly than the other girl. "It could have something to do with Second."

"Yeah, who _is_ Second?" a tall, skinny boy asked. "I've heard him mentioned, but I don't know… is he even a _he_? Is he even a person?"

"He's a person, all right," growled the boy who'd asked if we were in a different dimension. What had Brendan called him? Antonio? "He messed up the 1600s so badly, he almost destroyed all of time. And he did it on _purpose_!"

"So is he trying to mess up our time period, by taking us all out of time?" a boy with glasses asked. "Could that be it?"

"I still think this has something to do with Gary and Hodge," a Chinese-looking girl declared.

"Maybe Gary and Hodge and Second are all working _together!"_ someone shouted.

"I kind of agree with Emily," someone else said. "We're probably all way overanalyzing this and it's really just the time agents trying to keep us safe."

"Or maybe they just want to check in with us on how we're adjusting back to normal life after being in our other identities?" someone suggested.

"Quiet!" Chip held up his hands, and everyone quieted down. "He brings up a good point," said Chip, motioning toward the boy who'd proposed that maybe the time agents were just going to check in with us. "How many of you have already gone back and lived out your other identity? Raise your hand." Chip raised his own hand, and a bunch of other kids raised theirs.

Wait—no. _Everyone_ else raised theirs.

"I—I didn't exactly _live out_ my other identity," stammered a boy with light hair and blue eyes. "But I did go back in time, and JB said I didn't have to go again."

Chip looked like he was starting to relax. He brought his hand down slowly. "Well, maybe that's it then. Maybe—what's your name?" he asked the boy who'd come up with that theory.

"Josh."

"Maybe Josh is right. That would even explain why Jonah isn't here, because as far as I know, he hasn't yet gone back to his other identity. So maybe they are just checking in on all of us."

"Why wouldn't they wait until Jonah's gone back?" the boy next to Brendan asked. "I mean, it's only one more kid. Why wouldn't they wait for him and then get us all together?"

"Oh, JB could just talk to Jonah separately," Chip said. "He visits Jonah all the time."

Chip looked satisfied with the theory Josh had come up with. And so did just about everyone else. The circle was starting to disband now; everyone was starting to relax. But there was still something nagging at the back of my mind, something they were missing…

"Wait!" I gasped. "No! Chip, you're looking at it backward! Remember how in 1918, Gary and Hodge could send us on to the future only after Gavin and I had lived out the rest of the day we were supposed to die? Because by living out that day, we fixed the hole they made in history? Maybe _that's_ why everyone but Jonah is here. Jonah's the only one who hasn't gone back to his other identity, so he hasn't fixed the part of time that Gary and Hodge took him from. But it isn't the time agents who sent us here—it's Gary and Hodge! Now that we've all gone back and fixed their mistakes… they can take us to the future without a problem!" Something even more horrible occurred to me. "And maybe that's why they didn't turn us into babies while we were traveling through time. Because they knew they were just sending us to a time hollow, and that none of us had an Elucidator so we wouldn't be able to escape, and maybe Jonah left on his trip to his other identity this morning, like right before we all came here, and they're just waiting until he comes back and then they're going to send him here with us and turn us all into babies at the same time!"

Chip opened his mouth, unsure. But I didn't get to hear what he was going to say, because just then, someone appeared out of nowhere behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

"Chip, look out!" I screamed.

Chip whirled around. Before he even had time to react, Gavin dashed past me and lunged at the guy. Chip, realizing what was going on, rushed in to help Gavin. Together, they knocked the intruder to the ground.

"Who are you?" Gavin screamed, shaking the guy by the shoulders. "Are you working for Gary and Hodge?"

"Get off me," came the man's muffled reply.

"Where are Gary and Hodge? Who sent us here?" Gavin yelled, refusing to get off.

"Tell us," Chip demanded. "Who art thou, and for what purpose hast thou come?"

I didn't hear even a snicker from any of the other kids at Chip's medieval wording. Everyone was just staring, silent and openmouthed, at the scene in the center of the circle.

"I'm a time agent," the man protested. "Elucidator, get them off of me. Then put a shield around me."

Chip and Gavin were suddenly flung upright and several feet away from the man. The man stood up.

"You can put _shields_ around people with Elucidators?" I exclaimed indignantly, as Chip and Gavin tried to get closer to the man, with no success. "Why couldn't anyone have done that when my family was being murdered in the cellar in 1918? Then maybe we could have saved all of them!"

The unfamiliar man looked at me. "You must be Anastasia Romanova."

I nodded, blinking back sudden tears.

"From what I remember about your situation, you were without a properly working Elucidator for most of the time you were in 1918," the man said comfortingly. "And once we were able to get in to reach you, that time period had already been so damaged that any additional tampering would probably have damaged time so completely that we wouldn't have been able to get any of you back out. There are a lot of other reasons as well, but that's a big one."

Gavin and Chip were still pounding on what looked like an invisible wall encircling the guy.

"So you're a time agent?" someone yelled out. "How do we know you're telling the truth?"

"I have my badge with me," the man said. "Of course, it's not like any of you would be able to recognize an authentic time agency badge from a fraudulent one. And my Elucidator could tell you that I'm a time agent, but, well, Elucidators can be hacked."

"Just give one of us your Elucidator," Antonio called out. "If you're really from the time agency, you wouldn't have a problem with us using it to go home or call JB."

"If the time agency sent you here, why didn't they just send JB instead?" Gavin asked. "Most of us know him."

"The time agent you know as JB is unavailable right now," the man said stiffly. "He's dealing with a different matter. I was sent here to tell you why _you_ were sent here, and then to send you all home. Okay?"

Gavin and Chip were still glaring at the man distrustfully. So were several of the other kids. But the girl with the dark wavy hair—had someone called her Emily?—spoke up, "It wouldn't hurt just to hear what he has to tell us, would it?"

A few kids mumbled in agreement. I shrugged. There wasn't really anything else we _could_ do, if the man had a shield around himself and his Elucidator, and we were still stuck in a time hollow.

"Thank you," the man said to the girl who might have been named Emily. "All right. My name is Zechariah Geraldo McKenzie Ri'fa'sudre, and as I said, I'm a time agent. I know who all of you are. Although I was not involved in any of the missions returning any of you to the past, I was part of the original group of time agents who attempted to stop Gary and Hodge from taking you into the future the first time around. The time that you all crash-landed at the end of the twentieth century.

"As you all know, the time crash created almost thirteen years of completely damaged time, when no time travelers were able to get in or out. Once Damaged Time ended, Gary and Hodge came back and tried again to take you all to the future, but the time agent you know as JB ended that when he sent them to time prison."

All around the room, kids were nodding now. Most kids still seemed on edge, but nobody seemed much like they wanted to rush in and attack the man—Zechariah, had he said?—anymore.

"What most of you probably _don't_ know is that Gary and Hodge ended up breaking out of time prison. They attempted to kidnap a small group of you—" He glanced around, his eyes falling on me, Gavin, and Chip—"but were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, they got away. The time agency upped the security on all of you, because we figured they would make that kind of attempt again."

"So is this your idea of security?" someone called out. "Trapping us all in a time hollow?"

Zechariah looked embarrassed. "…No. We had time agents assigned to keep their eyes on each of you, and on the areas around you. We increased even that security a couple days later, when JB said he'd received a tipoff that all of you were in danger. Then apparently, another member of our squad, Hadley Correo, was able to give JB a specific date that something was supposed to happen, and JB rushed off impulsively to your time period to try to protect you. But… well, you could say he was a little too late, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Gary and Hodge were able to remotely transport each and every one of you to this time hollow, and nobody from the time agency could do anything about it."

"So it was Gary and Hodge who sent us here!" a tall Indian-looking boy exclaimed.

"Yes, they sent you here," said Zechariah. "But you are not in danger, and they are not on their way."

A bunch of kids started talking all at once, but Zechariah pointed at Haley, who had her hand raised and her face wrinkled in confusion. Everyone else fell silent as she asked, "Wasn't anybody keeping their eyes out for Gary and Hodge?"

"We all were," explained Zechariah. "We had our Elucidators set to inform us the moment either of them entered any point between the end of Damaged Time and the year 2100. But they were sneaky. They went under the radar. They got someone else to do their dirty work for them."

"Jonah?" someone gasped.

"Jonah wouldn't work for Gary and Hodge," Chip retorted angrily.

"It wasn't Jonah," said Zechariah. "It was Charles Lindbergh, a pilot from the early 1900s. Their original plan, once they had you all here, was for Lindbergh to go back to the scene of the time crash and fly the plane—with all of you on it as babies—on to the future, then come back and get you all from here, and bring you to the same time period. The duplication of all of you in time would have destroyed time so much that it would have made it impossible to time travel ever again. They were going to un-age all of you back to babies again, and have seventy-two babies to sell for their despicable business."

"Wouldn't that have created a paradox?" asked Alex. "Since if they went back and took us from the time crash to bring us here, none of us would have grown up into the people we are now, so we couldn't actually be here right now to create a duplication in time? And wait—they wouldn't have seventy-two babies to sell. Jonah's missing. They'd only have seventy-one."

"They planned to turn Charles Lindbergh back into a baby as well," Zechariah explained. "So they'd have two of each of you, plus Lindbergh, plus—well, I think it was actually Jonah's sister who they planned to put on the plane this time around…"

"Didn't the time crash make it Damaged Time?" the girl with the gray eyes asked softly, but I think I was one of the only ones who heard her, because at Zechariah's words, Chip suddenly gasped loudly, " _Katherine?_ They were going to put _Katherine_ on the plane and send her to the future? But they didn't do that, right? Katherine's still safe in the twenty-first century, right?"

"Charles Lindbergh _did_ manage to kidnap her and turn her into a baby," said Zechariah, and suddenly my knees felt weak. Katherine had been kidnapped? Katherine had been turned all the way back into a baby?

"But if you re-age someone through time travel, without giving them time to grow up and make memories in between, they go right back to being who they used to be before they were un-aged," Zechariah added reassuringly. "She'll still have all her memories intact, and she'll still be the same person she's always been. And there is now no possible way for Gary and Hodge to take her away and sell her. Or any of you."

I still had more questions about Katherine—like _Where is she now?_ and _Why are you saying_ _she will have_ _all her memories back rather than_ _she has_ _all her memories back_? But by now just about everyone was asking stuff like, "Why?" and "What happened to Gary and Hodge?"

"Gary and Hodge have been… well, I guess you could say they've gotten what they deserved," said Zechariah, smiling a little.

"Back to time prison?" asked Gavin. "I'm not sure that's secure enough. They might have planned ahead again. Last time, Gary gave me a code to break them out of time prison in case they got caught. And they did get caught, and I, well, I broke them out again, and everything almost worked the way they wanted it to."

"But Gavin's not working for them anymore," I added, because some kids were starting to look suspiciously at Gavin. "He's working to try and _catch_ them."

"You won't need to be trying to catch them anymore," Zechariah told Gavin. "Nobody will. And no, they're not in time prison."

"They're _dead_?" someone gasped.

"They're babies," said Zechariah. "Charles Lindbergh outsmarted them and turned them both back into babies. We're not sure what we're going to do with them, but they definitely won't be trying to kidnap anyone anymore."

A collective sigh of relief—or maybe it was a gasp of surprise—went around the room. We were safe. Safe forever from Gary and Hodge.

As long as this guy was telling the truth, and it _seemed_ like he was.

"Now that you all know why you were sent here, and what happened to Gary and Hodge, I can send you all home," Zechariah told us. "And now that Gary and Hodge are truly out of the picture, and all of you have had your turn going back in time, you really can go back to your normal lives. For good this time."

I saw kids around me exchanging hopeful glances. One kid let out a whoop. Others still looked somewhat uncertain. I looked at Gavin and he shrugged at me. I shrugged too, trying to convey the message, _This still could be some sort of setup and Zechariah could possibly be working for Gary and Hodge, but his story mostly seems to make sense and I don't know why he'd bother telling us all that if he was just working for Gary and Hodge. They'd just want to turn us to babies as quickly as possible so they could start making money._

"I'm going to send you all back right now," said Zechariah. "You should arrive just shortly after you left—maybe an hour or so."

 _An hour or so? But we time traveled. We're not in time right now. We should be able to go back_ _immediately_ _after we left, right? Like just a second later?_

I opened my mouth to ask, but Zechariah had already taken what I assumed was an Elucidator out of his pocket, and had started typing something into it. Abruptly, everything disappeared.

So I'd miss an hour. So what? Mom and Dad were both at work, so they wouldn't notice that I was missing. I'd be late to school, but I could come up with a good story—and besides, I was the new kid. New kids could get away with being tardy. Maybe I'd been helping my family unpack or something. Regardless, I couldn't help feeling happy. It sounded good to be going back to my normal life—as in, my normal life where I lived in Liston, Ohio, and had a biological brother and sister who didn't live with me but who I was still very close with, and where I finally didn't have to worry about getting kidnapped or randomly zapped to some other time period.

What I didn't know at the time, though, was that my "normal" life would never be "normal" again.


	6. Chapter 6

PART THREE

The landing was rough. Much rougher than when I'd landed in the time hollow. But that made sense. It wasn't possible to feel sick or in pain or any kind of physical discomfort in a time hollow.

I didn't feel too bad when I landed. Just a little bit queasy.

 _And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never time travel on an empty stomach._ I grinned, because time traveling on an empty stomach certainly hadn't been _my_ idea. But that was over now. All the time travel was over now, and it was time to get back to my normal life. I lay there on the floor, delaying the moment when I would have to get up and continue getting ready for school.

Then I heard the screaming.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

My eyes flew open, and I sat bolt upright. The room spun around me, but it didn't take long for me to locate the source of the high-pitched shrieking. A girl was standing a couple feet away from me, looking terrified at the very sight of me.

Ummm… okay. Did Zechariah accidentally send me to the wrong house?

I took in my surroundings. I was in a small kitchen, with brown cabinets, tan baseboards, a white tiled floor with a chip in one of the tiles… Wait a minute. I knew exactly where Zechariah had sent me, and how he'd made such a mistake.

I was in my old house in Ann Arbor.

Despite the awkward situation, I tried to smile at the girl. She looked a couple years younger than me—nine or ten, maybe, with her brown hair pulled into two thick ponytails at the sides of her head. She wasn't fat, but she was definitely a little pudgy—kind of like me. I could tell that if I stood up, she would only be a couple inches shorter than me. Her eyes were brown and wide with terror. I really hoped she hadn't seen me appear out of nowhere.

"I'm sorry," I told her, trying to think of something funny to say, something that would put her at ease. But what do you say to an elementary-aged girl when you've just appeared randomly in her house and she has no clue how or why?

"I'm going to tell my parents about you," the girl said, her voice shaking. I could tell she was trying to sound tough but didn't really have any _tough_ in her. "No—I'm going to call the _police!_ Get out of my house!"

"Okay, okay, I will!" My face was burning as I clutched the familiar kitchen counter to heave myself up. I felt a little off-balance as I hurried toward the front door—still trying to get over the timesickness. But I made it to the door, flung it open, and hopped down the front steps. I didn't allow myself to relax until I'd made it to the sidewalk.

 _Oh my gosh, that was so embarrassing._

"Zechariah, you sent me to the wrong house!" I moaned, sinking down and sitting on the curb. "That was my _old_ house. I _now_ live at 1873 Robin's Egg Lane, in Liston, Ohio." I chanced a glance behind me, back at my old house. Was the new girl who lived there really going to call the police on me? Should I leave? Walk down to one of my friends' houses, maybe, and tell them that I was here for a visit?

No, because who knew when Zechariah or some other time agent might want to pull me out of time and put me back where I belonged? Obviously, they wouldn't want to do it right in front of any of my friends. And once they realized the mistake, they'd probably want to do it _soon_ —I was back in real time now, so time was ticking away in Liston just like it was ticking away here. I needed to get back to my new house before too much time had passed, so nobody would notice me missing.

I waited there on the sidewalk, expecting to feel myself falling through time at any moment. "Uh, Zechariah? Or, whatever your name is? You did hear me, right?" I felt a little silly talking to nothing, but I knew I wasn't _really_ talking to nothing. JB had told me back in the other time hollow, when we were all recovering, that time agents could watch us from the future whenever they felt like it. And certainly they'd want to be watching us all now, to make sure we got home safely.

Wait—JB! Maybe Zechariah was busy with something else by now, having done his job of sending us all back home. He might not really care enough to check on us, because he didn't really know any of us. But JB would care. Maybe JB was watching.

"JB?" I said. "Zechariah put me in the wrong house. This _was_ my house, but I moved a few days ago. To 1873 Robin's Egg Lane, in Liston, Ohio."

I waited. Still nothing happened. I stood up. "Come on, JB," I said, getting impatient. "Time agency! Someone! I'm in the wrong place! Put me where I'm supposed to be!"

A squirrel scampered across the grass in the Mulallys' yard. A car backed out of the Flanigans' driveway, several houses down, and started driving down the street in the opposite direction. A bird flew overhead. Things were moving all around me, but I was staying put.

And then I realized why.

 _The time agents don't need to monitor us anymore_ , I thought. _Gary and Hodge aren't a threat anymore. I bet they pulled all the security off of us as soon as Gary and Hodge were turned into babies. Because now they don't need to worry about us being kidnapped anymore_.

It was weird, but the fact that I didn't have people from the future spying on me anymore actually made me feel very alone.

Maybe that was because I was stranded in my old neighborhood with no idea of how to get back home.

"Daniella?"

 _Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no._ Someone had seen me. Now they were going to ask why I was here, since I'd already moved almost a week ago, and where my parents were and how we liked Ohio and…

And the voice kind of sounded like my mom.

I turned around, slowly, and saw Mom standing in the doorway of our old house.


	7. Chapter 7

Dread poured over me, and I had to clutch the mailbox to keep from falling over. Zechariah had messed up even more than I'd thought. He hadn't just sent me to the wrong place—he'd sent me to the wrong _time!_ To a time when my family still lived there! If I was out here on the sidewalk, and then Mom went in and saw the other me in the house, or if the other me came walking around the corner or something… that would be a disaster.

But wouldn't it also be impossible? I racked my brain, trying to remember everything I knew about time travel. Hadn't somebody once told me that it wasn't possible for someone to be in the same time twice? Yeah… at one point, when I'd been recuperating in the time hollow, I'd asked Katherine why we couldn't go back to 1918 again, this time with a fully working Elucidator, and figure out a way to save my entire family. And she'd explained that since all of us had already lived through that day, none of us would ever be able to go back to it again.

So… was I in a time _before_ Mom and Dad adopted me? Before the time crash even happened?

"Daniella?" Mom said again, and I realized that this had to be _some_ time after I'd been adopted, because Mom knew who I was. Maybe I hadn't understood Katherine's explanation correctly. Or… she'd also said something about Damaged Time. Maybe that had been the real reason we couldn't go back to 1918 again?

"Daniella! Can you hear me?"

"Y-yes," I said hesitantly, darting my eyes around for signs of what year it might be. The house looked pretty much the same as it did before we started packing up to move. Mom's garden was neat and tidy beneath the bay window, our patio chairs were out on the front lawn—maybe I would have noticed them if I'd been paying more attention when I ran out of the house.

The driveway was covered with chalk drawings. _That_ was something different. I hadn't drawn with chalk in years.

The chalk drawings reminded me of the girl in the house. Suddenly, I was even more confused. _Get out of my house_ , the girl had said. She'd been acting like she belonged there and I didn't, which I'd assumed was correct. I'd assumed that this was my old house after my family had moved out, and that she was from the new family that had moved in.

So now why was Mom here?

"Mom?" I said uncertainly.

"Come here," said Mom, with a no-nonsense expression on her face. I started walking toward her, but then stopped.

The random girl was standing right behind Mom, staring at me.

"Mom… there's a girl behind you," I said. "Um… are we supposed to be here right now?"

Mom turned around and saw the girl. But she didn't react right. She didn't ask the girl "Who are you?" or tell her to get out of the house. Instead she turned back around and fixed _me_ with a stern expression.

"I don't know what game you two are playing, but you need to stop. Molly had me actually worried that there was someone in the house."

"There _was_ someone in the house! It was that girl!" The girl behind Mom pointed at me.

Mom was still looking at me with the same look she usually reserved for when I was about to get in trouble. "Daniella, is this your idea of a joke?"

"Is _what_ my idea of a joke? Inviting that girl into our house? _No_. What's even going on?"

Mom looked at the other girl, still with the same stern face. "Molly, is this _your_ idea of a joke? Are you trying to out-do your sister?"

"What sister? What do you mean?" The girl—Molly?—sounded as confused as I felt.

Was _Mom_ not supposed to be here either? Had she been taken to some other time hollow, or something, and the time agents had messed up putting her back too?

Hold on—why wasn't the girl yelling at _Mom_ to get out of the house?

And how did Mom know the girl's name?

"Just stop, you two. It's not funny. I'm trying to get ready for work. And you two should be getting ready for school. Especially you, Daniella."

Mom went back into the house. Molly gave me a dirty look, then followed Mom, shutting the door behind her.

I was totally, totally perplexed.

A new thought occurred to me. Could this possibly be the _future_? Were we supposed to move back to our old house in Ann Arbor at some point in time, and then was Mom supposed to babysit some bratty girl named Molly? It couldn't be too far into the future—Mom still looked the same, and clearly she wasn't expecting me to look a whole lot older.

Why in the world would we move back to our exact same house in Ann Arbor?

It didn't matter. What I needed was answers. So I headed to the only place I knew where I could get them—into the house.

Nobody was there when I first stepped in. This was good—it gave me time to look around, see what I could figure out. The first thing I noticed was that all of our appliances and furniture were still there—our refrigerator in the kitchen, our table in the eating area, our couches in the living room. The exact same pieces of furniture we'd had when we actually lived in this house.

The second thing I noticed was that there was a lot of unfamiliar stuff everywhere. The living room was strewn with books and stuffed animals, which I could tell from a distance weren't ones that I had ever owned. The refrigerator door was plastered with school papers. Mom and Dad used to do that with my school papers when I was younger—put the really good ones up on the fridge so that everyone who walked in would be like, _Wow, their kid's really smart!_

They kind of stopped doing that once I stopped getting really good grades on school assignments.

I walked over to the refrigerator to take a look at the papers. Some were spelling tests with big 100%s written on them. Others looked like math papers, and still others looked like paragraphs or essays.

And every single one of them had the name _Molly McCarthy_ on it.


	8. Chapter 8

I felt chills running up my spine. Molly _McCarthy_? What did this _mean_? Had Mom and Dad… adopted another kid? How far into the future was this, anyway?

I backed out of the kitchen and into the living room. I didn't let myself look at the stuffed animals or books on the floor. I just hurried up the stairs and toward Mom and Dad's room. I didn't care if Mom thought it was weird, me asking what year it was. I needed to know.

Right as I reached the door to their room, though, I stopped. Because I could hear Mom's voice inside. "Honestly, Molly, this has gone on long enough. If you don't stop right now, I'm grounding you. Now please, go get ready for school. Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

"But Mom…"

I kind of blanked out and didn't pay attention to the rest of what Molly said. Because now I knew that my suspicions were true. Molly had just called my mother _Mom_.

"Molly Joanne McCarthy, I'm serious. No more."

I was still standing there, frozen like a statue, when the door of Mom and Dad's room was whipped open. Suddenly, I was face-to-face with Molly. Her face was flushed and it really looked like she was trying not to cry.

Her face took on an angrier look when she saw me. "You!" she exclaimed, shoving me as she stepped out of the room and into the hallway. "Who are you? How did you brainwash my mom?"

Whoa. Did I really look that different from how I was supposed to look when I was… how old was I supposed to be by now? Fifteen? Sixteen? Seventeen? I'd seen my seventeen-year-old Anastasia tracer, and she hadn't looked that different from me at age thirteen. Was I supposed to have gotten a really big haircut or something?

Or… was I supposed to die sometime before my parents adopted Molly?

"I didn't brainwash your mom," I said, folding my arms across my chest. "She's my mom too. Do me a favor. Tell me today's date."

"She is _not_ your mom too! She keeps saying you're my sister, but you're _not_! I don't even have a sister!" Molly whirled around and stomped across the hall into my room. Or—it wasn't my room anymore. Gone were my dressers, my bed, my nightstand, and all my stuff. In their places were different dressers, a different bed, a tall skinny bookshelf, and a bunch of toys I'd never owned in my life.

There was also a laptop computer sitting open on one of the dressers. A computer would show me the date, wouldn't it? If I could just catch a glimpse of the bottom corner of the screen…

I darted into the room and over to the computer. "Hey!" exclaimed Molly, rushing over. "Now you're trying to steal my computer too?" She snatched the laptop away, but not before I'd gotten a good look at the date.

It was exactly the same day, month, and year that I'd been taken out of when I was brought to the time hollow. It wasn't even an hour later.

I sank down to the floor. The symptoms of timesickness were back, but they weren't timesickness this time. They were sickness-sickness. Something was very, very wrong.

I looked up at Molly, who was glaring a me from a few feet away, clutching the laptop as if she expected me to try to come and snatch it from her. For the first time, I felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Obviously, she had no clue what was going on either. We were both in the same boat.

"How long… have you lived here?" I asked Molly, trying for a friendly, conversational tone.

Molly's glare seemed to intensify. "Why do you care?"

I sighed. "Look, I'm as confused as you are. I'm not supposed to be here right now. I'm supposed to be somewhere else."

"No kidding." Molly's tone was sarcastic.

"But the woman in the other room—your mom—she really is my mom too. And this used to be my house. I lived here up until just a few days ago. This is where I grew up. I just… never knew you or had any siblings." _In this life._

A thought trickled into my brain as I remembered going back into 1918 and realizing for the first time that I had siblings. I remembered the tracers. I remembered how Gavin and I had kind of melded with our tracers. I remembered someone—had it been Jonah? Katherine? Chip? Maybe JB?—telling me that people couldn't see tracers in their regular time period. And that tracers were created when time travelers changed things.

Maybe _Molly_ had originally been stolen out of time too! Maybe she really was Mom and Dad's daughter—their biological daughter. Maybe she was closer to my age than I'd thought—only a year or so younger. And she'd been stolen from this time period, and had grown up somewhere else, and only just now she'd been reunited with her tracer. Her tracer that had been here all along, but I'd never seen it, because this was my regular time period…

But then wouldn't Mom be overjoyed to have Molly back, rather than acting like she'd always been there?

And, even if I had been really young when it happened, I was pretty sure that I'd know if I'd had a sister who'd been kidnapped.

"You're lying," Molly accused me. " _I've_ lived here my whole life. And I've never seen you before. And the only way that my mom could be your mom is if she had you before they got me and then gave you up for adoption. And I _know_ they wouldn't have done that, because why would they give one kid up for adoption and then just adopt a different one?"

"So you were adopted?" I tried to think of what this could mean.

"Yeah. When I was a _baby_. So this has always been my life, and my parents have always been my parents."

"I was adopted too," I told her.

"What, right now? My mom and dad wouldn't adopt another kid without telling me."

"No, I was adopted as a baby. By… well, I guess by your mom and dad. Mark and Diane McCarthy." I studied her, then took a deep breath and asked the important question: "Have you ever traveled through time?"

Molly looked at me like I was crazy. "Traveled through _time_? That's not even possible."

"I never thought it was possible either. Until I did it."

"Ohhh-kay," said Molly slowly. She didn't look angry anymore. Now she looked more… cautious. "So you're saying you've lived here all your life, when I know you haven't. And now you're saying you've traveled through time. Did you escape from a mental asylum?"

I could actually see how she would think that. I probably seemed pretty crazy.

"No," I answered. "I'm telling the truth. If you don't believe me, that's fine. I understand. I… look. Even though we don't know each other, we at least have something in common. We're both confused. Can we try to work together to figure out what's going on?"

Molly still looked suspicious. She didn't say anything.

"I promise you, I'm not crazy. I just—" I thought of a way that I could maybe convince her. "Hey, can I see your computer for a minute?"

Molly shook her head, clutching the computer to her chest.

"Fine. Well, I at least want you to look something up for me. Go on Google Images and look up a picture of Anastasia Romanova."

Molly wrinkled her nose. "Of _who_?"

"Anastasia Romanova. Grand Duchess of Russia, 1901 to 1918. Just look her up. Images."

Slowly, Molly set the computer down on the bed, keeping a firm grip on it with one hand. I watched as she got onto Google and clicked on the search bar. "Why do you want me to search this?"

"I'm trying to prove to you that I'm not crazy."

Molly muttered something under her breath. It sounded like "You are." But then she asked, "How do you spell the name?"

I told her. She typed it in, and hit Enter. Immediately, images pulled up over the whole screen.

Even though I'd told her to search for pictures of me, I wasn't fully prepared for what we'd see. It wasn't just me on the screen. There were also pictures of my family.

I blinked back tears from my eyes.

"Look at that picture," I said, pointing at one of Anastasia—me—at about my same age, head on. "Click on it, make it bigger, and just look at it. Who does she look like?"

Molly did as I said and looked at the picture. Then she looked back at me. Then back at the picture. "She looks…like you."

"Exactly. She _is_ me."

The skeptical look was back. "You're trying to tell me you're some girl from 1900? Some _royal_ girl from 1900? And that you time traveled here to convince my mom you're her daughter and mess up my life?"

"No…" I realized it wouldn't be an easy story to tell. "I could tell you the whole story, but you wouldn't believe me."

"What's the whole story?"

So I told her. I told her about how I had been Anastasia, and I'd been kidnapped by Gary and Hodge and turned back into a baby, and how the time plane I'd been on with all the other kids had crashed at the end of the twentieth century and all of us had been adopted. "And I never knew anything was weird about my life or my adoption until I started getting these strange calls from boys I didn't know," I told her in a theatrical voice.

Molly was listening intently now. She nodded. "Go on,"

"One of them asked me if I was going to move to Ohio. I said no. But guess what? That very day… just a few moments later… my parents told me we were moving to Ohio. I was like, 'how did they _know_?' And _then_ … I got a call from a different boy, who was acting very mysterious and saying stuff like, 'your birth certificate is fake'. And he told me to go meet up with the two other boys once I moved to Ohio. So I finally did move to Ohio, and I met up with the boys, and the third one, the one who'd told me to meet up with the others, popped out of the bushes and kidnapped us! He took us back in time to 1918. That was my first time traveling through time—well, that I can remember—and I was _terrified_. I had no idea what was going on. I really thought it was all a dream."

"And then what happened?" I could tell Molly still didn't fully believe me. But she definitely looked interested in the story.

I gave her a condensed version. "Basically, once we got to 1918, I realized that I really was Anastasia, and I lived as her for about a day. Well, and I was still me too, but that's kind of hard to explain. And then—" This part would always be hard for me to tell. "Well, and that night my whole family was supposed to be executed. But the other kids I was with, and some time travelers from the future, managed to save me and my brother and one of my sisters. And our kitchen boy. And they brought us back to the present."

Molly cocked her head to the side, as if trying to decide whether to believe me. Finally, she said quietly, "If that's all true… and I'm not sure if it is or not, but _if_ it is… then I might know why everything is so messed up."

"Why?" I asked eagerly.

"Because you went back in time. You know when people time travel in movies? Whenever they go back in time, they change things. And whatever they change in the past ends up making their regular time different when they go back to it. Like, you know how in _Back to the Future_ , if Marty hadn't gotten his parents together at the dance, he wouldn't have been born? It's kind of like that. Maybe when you went back in time— _if_ you went back in time—you changed things and it made it like this."

I thought about her idea. "Good theory," I said. "But it doesn't make sense. I came back from my trip through time five days ago. Everything was normal then. Why is it all the sudden all weird like this?"

"You're not the only person who's ever traveled through time, right?" asked Molly. "Maybe someone else went back in time and changed things."


	9. Chapter 9

She was right. That could have happened during the time I was in the time hollow. But no time was supposed to pass in a time hollow, right? The other thirty-four kids and I could have stayed in that time hollow for ages and ages, and then Zechariah still could have sent us back—

Zechariah.

He'd said he was a time agent, but he hadn't given us any proof. Really, all he'd done was tell us that he _couldn't_ give us any proof. What if Zechariah actually wasn't a time agent? What if he was actually working for that guy Brendan had mentioned—what was his name, Second? Brendan had told me how Second had totally messed up time. And hadn't he said something about Second making a different dimension?

What if Zechariah had sent me to the dimension Second had made rather than to the real one?

"Daniella? Molly?"

Molly and I both jumped this time. I looked and saw Mom standing by the door to the room. "Are you both ready for school?"

"Yes," I said quickly, before Molly could say anything. "We're both ready. Hey Mom… real quick, could you tell the story of when we got Molly? Just 'cause I kind of forget all the details."

Now Mom was looking at me suspiciously, the way Molly had been minutes before. "Right now? I don't want you to be late for school."

"Yes. Right now. We both want to hear the story."

I looked over at Molly, who hesitated, then nodded along with me. "And then you can tell the story of how you got her," she said, pointing at me.

"I don't know why you girls want to hear the stories _now_ …" Mom shook her head. "At least you've stopped pretending you don't know each other."

Molly opened her mouth, but I cut her off before she could say anything. "Yeah, sorry about that. That was my idea, of course. You probably guessed that. But could you please tell about when we first got Molly?"

Mom leaned against the doorframe. "I can tell you _briefly_. Then we all have to get going."

I settled myself into a more comfortable position on the floor as she started.

"You know that Dad and I met in college, and started dating when we were seniors, and got married the year after we got our PhDs. We always wanted to have kids, but I couldn't get pregnant. So we registered with an adoption agency—Hearts of Love, it was called. It services children and families throughout the entire Midwest. We had to wait _so_ long before they finally had a baby for us—three whole years. But finally, we got a call one morning saying that a birth mother had chosen us to be the parents of her baby. And we were so excited! We still had a couple months to wait before you were born, so we rushed around setting up your room and buying things for you and making sure everything was absolutely perfect. And then… they called us at work when you were born, and Dad and I got in the car and drove all the way to Indiana—that's where you were born, Molly—to get you. And it was the happiest moment of our lives when they placed you in our arms."

I felt like I had been replaced. _The happiest moment of our lives_ … that was what Mom and Dad used to say about when they'd first met _me_.

"What about me?" I asked. "Didn't you get me from Hearts of Love too? Wasn't it the happiest moment of your lives when you first got to hold _me_?"

A look of confusion spread across Mom's face. "Yes… yes, honey, of course it was. And yes… we did get you from Hearts of Love. Wait—I'm confused. Oh, that's right. Hearts of Love called us a week after we'd registered asking if we were ready for a baby. We were so excited and couldn't believe that it had taken such a short amount of time! Your call came in at night, Daniella. Very late at night. We were just turning off the TV and getting ready to go to bed when we heard the phone ring. Dad answered it, and called me to come over, and it was the lady from the agency, telling us they had a baby for us and that we could pick you up that very night! So of course we got right in the car and drove right to the agency to pick you up. And it was the happiest moment of our lives when they placed you in our arms."

"Until you got me," said Molly. "Then _that_ became the happiest."

"They were both the happiest," said Mom. She still looked puzzled. "But… that's strange. I can't remember where Daniella was when we went to get you, Molly. Did we call Grandma McCarthy to stay with her… or did we take her with us…"

"How did I react when I first met Molly?" I asked.

Mom scrunched up her face. "I—I don't remember," she said, sounding stunned. "I don't remember! How can I not remember something as important as that? You meeting your little sister for the first time… I don't even remember whether you came to the hospital with us! I'm sure you did…" Mom clutched her head with both of her hands. "Ugggh, I think all this stress is getting to me. What with work and bills and of course all that mess we had to go through with moving…"

"Moving?" Molly and I both said at the same time.

"Who's moving?" asked Molly. "We're not moving!"

"We still moved?" I asked.

Mom gave us both incredulous looks. "Where have you girls _been_ for the past few months? Of course we moved! We're just staying here for right now because… because… because of work. Because Dad and I still have our jobs here. Partially. I think." She didn't look too sure of anything.

"Where is Dad?" Molly asked.

"In the…" Mom trailed off, turning around and peering back into her room. "Mark?"

No answer.

"That's weird. He was just in the bathroom, shaving… but now… MARK?"

Still no answer. Mom dug in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Molly and I both watched as she went into her contacts and tapped Dad's name. The phone rang a couple times before Dad answered.

"Hi Diane. What's up?" I could hear his voice even through the tiny speaker.

"Where are you?" Mom asked. "I didn't see you leave this morning."

"I'm at work. Where are _you_?"

"At home, getting ready to leave for work. And trying to get the girls out the door for school."

"But we drove in together. This morning, when we left early…"

Now Mom's face looked like a total mask of confusion. "That's right… we did. To… wasn't it to Battelle Institute this morning?"

"Yes… or no… wait, now I'm getting confused. I remember being at the Ann Arbor house this morning… or was that yesterday?"

"I'm at the Ann Arbor house right now. But we… this is getting so confusing, having two houses in two different places. We need to finish up selling this place."

"We'll talk about it later," said Dad over the phone. "I have to get back to work."

The moment Mom disconnected the call, Molly trounced her with questions. "What do you mean, two houses in two different places? Are you talking about selling this house? But I like this house. I don't want to move. Where's Dad?"

"In Ohio?" Mom's words came out as sort of a question.

"Ohio? Where my other family lives?" asked Molly.

"What other family?"

"My other family. The Rousseaus. In Ohio."

Nothing about anything was making any sense. But suddenly I saw a little spark of hope. Maybe this was all a hoax. Some elaborate trick my parents had set up to get me back for all the pranks I'd pulled on them over the years. Maybe Molly was just a really, really good actress who they'd hired to try to freak me out. Maybe the "other family" she was talking about was her real family, and they were about to tell me that it had all been a trick…

Except that I was the jokester in my family. Period. Mom and Dad may laugh at my jokes, but they themselves weren't the types to play tricks on people. They were both way too serious, way too intellectual, way too… parent-ish. I could never in a million years imagine them going through all this trouble to make me believe that my world had been totally changed and I now lived in my old house again and had a sister.

Plus, I'd traveled through time. If that was possible, so was all of this. Unfortunately.

"Are you talking about your birth family?" Mom asked Molly. "Because we don't know who they are or where they live. All we know is that your birth mother was a teenager who wanted her baby to be adopted by two loving parents. We don't have any contact information or—"

"Not my birth family! My _other_ family! The Rousseaus! The other ones who adopted me! The ones I'm with when I'm not with you guys!"

If my parents had adopted Molly, why in the world would she also have been adopted by a different family?

"Molly, I have no idea what you're talking about," said Mom. "I—goodness gracious, I have to go. You have to go. We all have to leave for school and work! Grab your stuff and get to the bus stop, both of you."

Mom started hurrying down the stairs, and Molly and I looked at each other. "We should probably at least pretend we're going to the bus stop," I said.

Molly looked at me incredulously. "I don't want to go to school!"

"I don't either. I don't even go to school around here anymore. But that's why I said _pretend._ _Mom_ needs to think we're going to school."

Molly looked at me with a mix of apprehension and admiration on her face. I stood up. "Grab your backpack or whatever you need. I'll meet you outside."

I went downstairs. Mom was in the kitchen, gathering up her purse and briefcase. "Mom?" I asked. "I'm not enrolled in school here anymore, right? Didn't you take me out of this school system when we moved to Liston?" I figured that would be a safe question to ask, since at least Mom still remembered that we _had_ moved to Liston. Unless she decided that she needed to re-enroll me here.

"What?" Mom seemed to have to think hard on that one. "No, you're still enrolled here. Wait—no, we withdrew you. You're enrolled in Liston. But… Molly's still enrolled here. Or—wait, that makes no sense. Why would we have enrolled you in Liston and not Molly? When did we come back from Liston anyway? I remember the drive there, but I don't remember the drive back. Am I losing my mind?"

"I think we all are," I muttered, but didn't let her hear me. "Mom… just go to work. I'll walk Molly to the bus stop."

"Okay." Mom gave me a hug, and I was grateful that at least I still had my parents. However confused they were, however weird the situation was, Mom and Dad were still alive and still mine.

Even if they were also Molly's.

I waited outside for a few minutes, and then Mom's car pulled out of the garage and Molly came out the front door. I watched as Mom's car headed off in the direction of the place where she and Dad worked—where they used to work, before we moved. Then I turned to Molly.

"Okay," I said. "What's this about you having two families?"

"I do have two families," said Molly. "The McCarthys and the Rousseaus. Sometimes I'm Molly McCarthy, sometimes I'm Molly Rousseau."

"And the Rousseaus live in Ohio?"

Molly nodded. "Near my aunt and uncle and cousin."

"How often…how often do you switch families? And _why_ do you switch families? It's not like your parents are divorced and you go back and forth between your dad and mom."

Molly frowned. "I… don't know. I guess there were two families who wanted to adopt me, and maybe the adoption agency couldn't decide which one to give me to?"

"Adoptions don't work like that." I wasn't an adoption expert, but still. I'd never heard of anything happening like that, unless…

"Are the Rousseaus your birth family?"

"No." Molly shook her head adamantly. "I don't know my birth parents. I just know the two families who adopted me."

"And… you never answered my other question. How often do you switch off?"

Molly tilted her head to the side. "Um… I… I don't know that either." She looked surprised that she didn't know. "The last time I was with the Rousseaus was… was… that's really weird. I kind of remember being with them yesterday, but I remember being with the McCarthys yesterday too. So maybe I switch off like halfway through every day?"

"That doesn't make sense," I argued. "Not if they live in Ohio and my parents still live here."

"Well, then I don't know!" exclaimed Molly. "It's weird. I'm trying to think of, like, holidays and things, and who I was with for each holiday. But—like Halloween this year, I remember trick-or-treating in _both_ neighborhoods."

I tried to think of how that could be possible. Then I gave up. Nothing about this situation was possible. I probably really was in Second's other dimension of time. Maybe in that dimension people could be in two places at once?

 _Wham_. Thinking about Second and other dimensions gave me a great idea. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought about it before. It might not help me solve anything or figure anything out, but I could at least call my friends and see if any of them were experiencing weird stuff like I was. And maybe some of them would know more than I did about all this.

They'd all been in the time cave, right? Who knew? Maybe in the time cave someone had mentioned something about ending up in a house you used to live in with a little girl who claimed to be your parents' daughter.

"Molly," I said. "Let's go back into the house. I need to use the phone."

"Who're you going to call?" asked Molly, starting to look suspicious again.

"Some friends who might know more about this than I do. Who may be able to give us some information."

"Don't you have a cell phone?"

"Yes." I sighed. "But I didn't have it with me when I… got here. It's sitting on my kitchen table at home."

"How did you end up here anyway? Were you just at your house, and then _whoom_ , you were here?"

"No, I time traveled somewhere else first. It's a long story. I didn't do any of it on purpose."

"Oh yeah. The time travel." Molly sounded sarcastic, like she still didn't quite believe me. But I ignored her and went back into the house.

I went upstairs to the archaic wall phone that Chip had called me on back when it all started, the first day I had any indication that my life wasn't normal. That seemed like such a long time ago now. I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear. Then I stopped.

I didn't know any of my friends' phone numbers by memory. Who needed to, in the twenty-first century? I had them all in my contacts list on my cell phone. I knew the Liston area code, and I was pretty sure I could remember the first three digits of Gavin's number. But that was it.

"What's the problem?" Molly asked, coming up behind me. "You should know how to use an old phone like that, if you're _from the past_."

"I don't know any of my friends' phone numbers," I told her, ignoring her sassiness. "They're in my phone, so I never bothered memorizing them. Grr!" If only I'd had my phone with me when I got whisked away through time. Not like I'd known I was about to get whisked away through time. Or that I'd end up in some sort of alternate reality world.

"We could look them up," said Molly, going back into my—her— _the_ bedroom and picking up the laptop. "What are their names?"

"Gavin Danes, Chip Winston, Jonah Skidmore, and Katherine Skidmore," I recited. "But I don't think you're going to have any luck finding their phone numbers online. I guess you could try looking up Angela DuPre, but—"

" _Gavin Danes_?" Molly exclaimed incredulously, sounding as shocked as she would have if I'd told her one of my friends was named Justin Bieber. "And wait—do all your friends live in _Ohio_?"

"Yeah." I had no clue what she was getting at. "Those friends do. The ones who might know anything. Why?"

"Because I have a cousin named Gavin Danes. In Ohio."


	10. Chapter 10

I stared at Molly. This weird situation had just gotten even weirder. Was that another thing that had changed because of Second or whoever had messed with time? Molly wasn't only supposedly my sister, she was also Gavin's cousin? Did that make me Gavin's cousin too?

"What does he look like?" I asked cautiously.

"Well, his hair used to be kind of the same color as yours, but a couple months ago he dyed it jet black with some purple. And he's taller than you, but maybe about the same age… how old are you?"

"Thirteen." Molly's description of Gavin matched my friend/brother Gavin to a T, right down to the purple in his hair. What was the likelihood that there would be two kids in the same state with the same name and the same look?

"Yeah. My cousin's thirteen too."

"I think we're talking about the same person."

Molly's eyes were wide with apprehension. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know. I guess it means… I guess it means that you have Gavin's phone number!" I grinned triumphantly. "Do you? Do Mom and Dad? Can we call him?"

" _I_ do, in my cell phone," said Molly. "Mom and Dad—this mom and dad—don't. They don't even know Gavin. He's my cousin from my other family."

Molly reached into her pocket and pulled out an iPhone in a purple case.

"Not fair," I muttered. "I didn't get a phone until I started middle school. Who got you that one—my parents or your other family?"

Molly frowned, as if trying to remember. "My other family gave me this one for my tenth birthday last month. And… I don't have a phone yet, with this family." She swiped across the screen and brought up her address book. "Here's Gavin." She touched Gavin's name and then hit _Call_.

The phone rang. And rang, and rang, and rang. _Please let him pick up_ , I prayed. I _needed_ to talk to him about this.

"Molly?" Gavin's voice came out of the phone.

"Um, hi Gavin," said Molly, suddenly sounding a lot younger. "Umm…I'm here at my Michigan house with your friend…"

"With me," I spoke into the phone. "Daniella."

" _What_? Molly and Daniella—you guys are together? In _Michigan_?"

"It's where Zechariah put me back," I explained. "At my old house."

"And my mom thinks Daniella is part of our family," added Molly.

Gavin was silent for a moment. Then he said in a fake-nonchalant voice, "Molly, you know Carter and Callie, right?"

"Who?"

"Carter and Callie. My brother and sister."

Molly flashed me an alarmed look, then spoke into the phone. "You don't have a brother and sister."

"You too?" I exclaimed. "What's going on? Did he put us back in the wrong dimension? Is this that alternate world Second created, or whatever? That time agent that talked to us—is _he_ Second?"

"I don't think he's Second," said Gavin. "Antonio would've recognized him. Probably some of the other kids would've too. But this is really freaky. When he sent us all out of the time hollow, I ended up back in my room, like I was before. But when I went to the kitchen to get breakfast, there were two kids there. And my mom was insisting they were my brother and sister. I'd never seen them before in my life."

"That's almost the same thing that happened to me," I explained what had happened since I'd arrived back at my old house.

"This definitely has something to do with time travel," said Gavin. "I tried calling Jonah and Chip, but they both didn't answer. So I called Maria, and she said that some extra furniture had just randomly appeared in their house, but she and Leonid figured that was normal in the 'future'. You know, our time period. No extra people, though. I asked if I could talk to Angela, and she said Angela wasn't there. She said Angela left about an hour ago with JB."

"With JB? Where were they going?"

"Maria didn't know." Gavin's tone was dark. "But she said they seemed like they were in a big hurry."

I thought about that for a moment. Zechariah had said that Gary and Hodge were the ones who sent us to the time hollow. Maybe JB and Angela had been trying to stop that?

Or maybe they had been trying to stop _this_. Whatever _this_ was.

"So what I don't get," said Gavin, bringing me back from my thoughts. "Is this whole thing with you and Molly. I mean, Carter and Callie are random kids who popped out of nowhere. But you and Molly both had families before. How are you in the same family now? Is it your family or her family?"

"It's my family," Molly and I both said at the same time. "Well, my Michigan one," Molly added.

"What are you talking about?" Gavin snapped, and for a moment he sounded like the angry, fake-tough kid he'd been when I first met him. This voice was the one he used when he was nervous or scared. "Are your parents still my Uncle Rick and Aunt Sue?"

"Yes. I still have both sets of parents. My Rousseau mom and dad and my McCarthy mom and dad. The only difference is Daniella." Molly's face paled suddenly. "At least… I _think_ I still have my Rousseau parents."

"The Rousseaus are your _only_ parents! You've never been part of Daniella's family! Daniella… do you think the _real_ reason Gary and Hodge got some other guy to send us to the time hollow was because they were busy doing something really awful with time? Something that caused all this to happen?"

I didn't get a chance to answer, because all the sudden, Molly screamed.


	11. Chapter 11

"What?" I gasped, as Gavin yelled from the other end of the phone line, "Molly? Was that you? Are you guys okay over there? What's going on?"

Wordlessly, Molly pointed behind me, her eyes round with terror. I turned around, preparing myself for the worst—a firing squad? Men with bayonets? Gary and Hodge, fully adult and ready to steal me once more?

Instead, I saw JB.

"JB!" I exclaimed, running over and giving him a hug. Which was maybe a little odd, because JB and I hadn't really had that kind of relationship before. Jonah and Katherine treated him like a friend, because he was a good friend of theirs. But to the rest of us, he was more of an acquaintance.

I didn't care. I was so glad to see someone who could explain and fix everything.

"Who's that?" Molly asked me, looking like she was about to cry. "Is that some other new family member I never had before?"

"No," I replied, almost laughing with relief. "This is someone who knows a lot about time travel. He's going to fix time!"

Molly didn't look reassured, and for the first time I realized that fixing time wouldn't be as great for her as it would be for me. Because _I_ was the one who belonged in my family—right? If time went back to how it used to be, then I would get my parents back, as _mine_ , and Molly would—what? Fade out of existence? I didn't want her as my sister, but I definitely didn't want _that_ to happen to her. Maybe she would go back and just live with her other family, the Rousseaus. Yeah, that would work. Because if the Rousseaus were Gavin's aunt and uncle, and _he_ remembered Molly always being his cousin, then that's what it would be like when JB fixed time.

Oh—Gavin! I ran over to where Molly had dropped the phone. "Gavin!" I exclaimed. "You won't believe who's here. JB just showed up! He's going to—wait, JB, do you need me to do something to help you fix time? Do I need to go back in time again?" I wasn't thrilled about the prospect, but it would be worth it if it meant things would go back to normal.

JB was frowning. "Time… _is_ fixed," he said, then hesitated, as if unsure of whether to say more. "Daniella, I know this is all very confusing for you. It's confusing for everybody. Even the time agency is perplexed by it. But we're reasonably certain that everything is going to work out." He paused. "Do you give me permission to take you and Molly to a time hollow to talk things over?"

"Why do we need to talk in a time hollow?" I asked.

"Because we're going to meet with some other people as well. Angela and our friend Hadley are going to bring Gavin and his family, and I was thinking we'd make a couple stops along the way to pick up your parents. That way we can all talk together, in a group."

"Okay," I said hesitantly. "But my parents don't know about time travel. And I'm pretty sure Gavin's parents don't either. And—"

JB grabbed my arm. "Hold onto Molly," he instructed me.

I did.

And then the floor dropped out from beneath us all.

We didn't spin away through the blackness of Outer Time, the way I'd expected us to. Instead, we almost instantaneously appeared in the deserted hallway of some office building.

Molly whipped her head back and forth. "But—But—that's impossible!" she stammered. "How did we just do that? What happened?"

"Why didn't it feel like we traveled through time this time?" I asked.

"Because we only went a couple seconds into the future. This was mainly just a matter of transportation," JB answered my question, then looked kindly at Molly. "Molly, I know this is all very strange for you, but we did just travel through time and space. And we're going to do it again, after we get your mom."

"And how are we going to do that?" I asked.

"Well, we need to get her away from people, because obviously, we can't have people seeing her disappear. I was thinking you and Molly could go find her, and bring her here. Then we could all go get your dad together."

"How—" I was about to ask _How are we supposed to find my mom?_ when JB pulled out what looked like an iPad and showed it to me. "Here's a map of the building," he explained. "We're right here, and your mom is right there." He pointed to our respective locations.

I started walking to the end of the hallway. Molly followed me. Together, we left the hallway and continued down another hallway, toward the office cubicles.

"If we get my mom and dad and bring them to the place that guy wants them, will that make everything go back to normal?" Molly asked plaintively.

I frowned, remembering how JB had answered when I'd asked if we were going to fix time: "Time… _is_ fixed." He couldn't possibly mean that, right? He must've meant that everything about 1918 was fixed, or maybe that all the missing kids had already had their turn going back in time and fixing their section of history. Surely that was what he meant.

"I think so," I told Molly. But I wasn't sure.

We finally arrived at Mom's cubicle. She was deeply engrossed in her computer, and only looked up when I said, "Mom?"

"Daniella! Molly! What are you girls doing here? You're supposed to be at school!"

Molly and I glanced at each other, and for a moment it felt like we really were sisters, trying to come up with a good story to avoid getting in trouble.

"Mom…" I said. "You need to come quick. Follow us."

"It's an emergency," added Molly, and I nodded, impressed.

"An emergency? What—"

"Just come on!" Molly grabbed Mom's hand, and together we led her through the maze of cubicles, down the other hallway and into the one JB was in.

"Girls, can you please just tell me what—"

"I'm going to send her straight to the time hollow," JB interrupted Mom, talking to me. "With Molly. Daniella, you and I will go get your dad."

Everything disappeared. This time I felt it slightly, like I was somehow moving very fast even though I was just standing still. And then I appeared in a different office building hallway.

"You sent them to a time hollow by themselves?" I exclaimed indignantly. "They'll be totally freaked out! Mom has no clue what's going on, and Molly hardly knows more than Mom…"

"For them it will feel like a matter of seconds before we meet up with them," said JB. "Here's the map showing where your dad is." Once again, he pulled out the "iPad"—which I now knew to be an Elucidator—and showed me a map.

"And you're really going to explain everything once we all get to the time hollow?" I asked. It wasn't that I didn't trust JB, because I did. It was just that it seemed like we had to go through an awful lot of steps before we could get there.

"I promise," said JB.

I walked down the hallway, opened a door, and found myself in a large room full of computers.

I scanned the room for Dad. Finally, I spotted his mousy brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. I walked over to him, ignoring the people who were giving me looks of surprise.

"Dad," I said. He turned around.

"Daniella? What are you doing here?"

"You need to come with me quickly. It's an emergency." I tried to look panicked. It wasn't too hard.

"What kind of emergency? Is Mom all right? Is Molly all right?"

Some tiny little bubble inside me burst when he said Molly's name. Somehow I'd been holding onto the hope that even though Mom was in Michigan and remembered having Molly as a daughter, Dad would just be going on with life as normal—working in Ohio, thinking about coming home to Mom and me. He wouldn't have ever heard of Molly.

But apparently he had.

"Just come with me!" I grabbed him by the hand, like Molly had done with Mom, and brought him to the hallway where JB was waiting.

"We'll all go together," said JB, coming over and resting his hand on my shoulder. Then everything around us disappeared, and we were floating through Outer Time.

"What the—?" Dad yelped. I had never heard Dad yelp before. "What's going on? Who are you?" he said accusingly to JB.

"I'm sorry for having to introduce myself this way," said JB. "My name is JB. I'm from the future—well, the future to you, anyway. I'm a time agent—I make sure people are following the rules of time travel. And I try to fix the problems that occur when people don't. I know it's hard to believe, but we are right now traveling through time."

"This is the weirdest dream I've ever had," Dad muttered disbelievingly.

Neither JB nor I bothered to correct him. A moment later, we came into the rough part of time travel, and then we landed in the time hollow.


	12. Chapter 12

The time hollow. Maybe it was the same one I'd been in with the other thirty-four kids, maybe not. There was no way of knowing.

But just like when I'd first gotten to the time hollow with the other thirty-four kids, most of the people around me were screaming.

I looked around. Dad was still holding my hand, only his grip had tightened. He was staring around at everything with wide eyes, as if he didn't dare believe it.

Molly was being hugged by a man and woman I didn't know. Mom seemed to be yelling hysterically at them.

Another man and woman I didn't know were clustered together with two young kids I'd never seen before. All four of them looked terrified and confused. Gavin and Angela and a tall bearded guy were talking to them, trying to calm them down.

JB was looking around warily, as if second-guessing the whole idea.

"Listen up, everyone," he said.

The only people who reacted were Gavin, Angela, and the bearded guy. They turned around and looked at JB. The people behind them kept freaking out, and Mom and the people hugging Molly kept screaming at each other.

"She is _not_ your daughter, I don't care if you gave birth to her, you signed over those rights the moment she was born! She's _our_ daughter!" I had never seen Mom so angry. Even when she did get angry (usually at me), she never yelled like that. It was scary.

"I don't know what you think you're talking about, lady, but Molly has been _our_ daughter ever since she was a few hours old! You have her mixed up with someone else!" The man spat back, just as angrily.

"No, _you_ have her mixed up with someone else!" Mom yelled.

Dad jumped to his feet and went over to side with Mom.

"Calm _down_ , everyone!" JB yelled loudly, trying to be heard over everything else. "Mark and Diane, Rick and Sue, you're _both_ right. Can everyone please just let me explain?"

"Everyone shut up and listen to JB!" said Gavin, and the people behind him—his family?—seemed to obey, at least somewhat.

Molly broke free of the people hugging her, and Mom reached out for her. But Molly ran over to _me_. "Can you tell the guy to fix time _now_?" she asked pleadingly.

Mom and Dad, as well as the other couple, both started toward Molly. But JB stepped in front of them and held up his hand. "Molly is safe," he said. "Look around this room. No doors, no windows. It's not like any of you are going to be able to take her anywhere. We have a lot we need to talk about."

"Like how we ended up in this room in the first place?" the woman exploded. "These people here are saying it's time travel!" She gestured toward Angela and the bearded man. "Even my own _nephew_ is trying to tell us it's time travel!"

"It is!" Gavin shot back. "Can you guys just give JB a chance to explain what's going on?"

"Please," I added to Mom and Dad, since they seemed to be on the brink of starting an argument with the other couple again. "They're right. We all just time traveled. This place is called a time hollow. It's a place where we can take as much time as we want to do things, and then go back and no time has passed at all."

I'd forgotten I wasn't really the kind of person who people would normally believe. Everyone was looking at me skeptically. If Mom and Dad hadn't just traveled through time to get here, they'd probably think this was another one of my pranks.

But there was finally enough silence for JB to speak. "Thank you, Gavin and Daniella. Let's start with introductions. I'm JB, and I'm a time agent from what you think of as the future. I know this is confusing, but I'm going to explain what's going on in a moment." He gestured toward the bearded man. "This is Hadley Correo, one of my fellow time agents. He is also from what you think of as the future." He continued down the line. "This is Angela DuPre, who is from your time period, but very involved in time travel. We'll get into more detail about that later." He gestured toward Gavin and the people behind him. "This is the Danes family. Jeremiah, Cindy, Gavin, Carter, and Callie."

The two kids—Carter and Callie—immediately opened their mouths to argue. "Hold on," said JB. "Let me finish. This is the Rousseau family. Rick, Sue, and Molly. Sue and Cindy are sisters."

My parents were the ones who opened their mouths to argue this time. "And this is the McCarthy family," JB said loudly, cutting them off. "Mark, Diane, Daniella, and Molly."

"Why'd you say Molly's name twice?" asked Gavin's mom. "She's not part of their family. She's my niece."

"I will get to that," JB promised. "But first, some of you need a little background information." He looked at Angela, Hadley, Gavin, and me. "Feel free to chime in if I forget anything important."

He explained about Gary and Hodge, the thirty-six stolen babies, and the time crash. Angela told about the time crash from her perspective, which was interesting—I hadn't even known she was there when it happened. Then JB and Angela took turns explaining about what had happened in the time cave, which was news to me as well. And finally, he told our families about how Gavin and I were two of the kids from the plane, and that we were originally Anastasia and Alexei Romanov. Gavin and I chimed in about our trip to 1918, and our recovery in a futuristic hospital (Gavin) and a time hollow (me).

It was hard to tell how much our families believed. It was hard to tell how much they even understood. They were mainly just staring openmouthed and wide-eyed, as if trying to decide whether we were telling the truth or just seriously, seriously crazy.

But there were no more interruptions.

"That's the background information," JB said, when we were done. "Now, Gavin, Daniella—did anyone from the time agency tell you why you were in that time hollow?"

"Some guy named Zechariah came," I answered. "He said Gary and Hodge had gotten some other guy to send us there? Because they were trying to destroy time? Was he really a time agent, or was he working for Second?"

"Zechariah is really a time agent," said JB, sighing. "And everything he told you was true. He just didn't tell you _everything_. We—the time agency—weren't going to explain things at first. We didn't even _know_ much of anything at first, and we thought it would be better to just see what happened, if time sealed itself together, if things were working out… Jonah convinced me to have this meeting with you."

"You've seen Jonah?" I blurted out. "Is he okay? Is Katherine?"

"They're both fine," JB assured me. He addressed the room as a whole. "Jonah and Katherine Skidmore. I've never met kids quite like them before in my entire life. Both very brave, very resourceful, and willing to do just about anything for the people they care about. Also very impulsive and… they do things that no certified time agent would even dream of attempting. But… those very things are often what end up being the best solution. Sometimes the only solution."

"So are you going to see if Jonah and Katherine can come up with a way to solve _this_ problem?" asked Gavin. "Or have you already figured it out?"

JB sighed and didn't meet Gavin's eyes. "Let me explain what happened, and why things are like this."

Nobody said anything, so JB continued.

"Gary and Hodge had a plan about how to get really rich, really fast. Part of that plan was trapping you all in the time hollow and then bringing you all to the same time as the baby versions of you. That many duplications… it would have ended the possibility of time travel forever. Even a single duplication of the same person at any point in time… can be disastrous. We used to think it wasn't possible. But it is possible, only when time is on the brink of falling apart.

"When we have duplications, and when time is on the brink of falling apart, time can split into different dimensions. That was something else the time agency never thought possible—never even thought of! But a former employee of mine, who went by the name Second Chance, figured it out and caused time to split in 1611. Gary and Hodge studied what he did and attempted to copy him. They did succeed in splitting time, although things didn't go exactly how they wanted them to. Thank God.

"When Gary and Hodge sent all of you to the time hollow, they also set things up so that Jonah would be at the scene of the time crash. They brought a baby off the plane that had all of you on it, and tricked Jonah into thinking it was the baby version of himself. It wasn't. Time had already split by then, and Jonah wasn't in the dimension that had the baby version of himself at that time. But he thought that the baby was himself, so he brought the baby to his parents' house and gave the baby to them, thinking that he was at least fixing one thing—giving the baby version of himself to his parents.

"In Jonah's original identity, he had an identical twin brother. The baby Jonah gave to his parents was actually his twin brother."

I opened my mouth to ask what Jonah's original identity was—not that I probably would have recognized it, since I'd never paid too much attention in social studies. But JB was still talking.

"While Jonah was at the airport, he also gave a note to Angela, which led to her having an Elucidator at a time that, had she not had it, Jonah would have died— _before_ he had the chance to write the note. And he also sent one of the versions of the time crashed plane back to the airport— _after_ he had already been on that plane, at the airport.

"All these near-paradoxes, all these instances when time was on the verge of catastrophe, created a huge energy force unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. And it took the different versions of time that had been created when time split, and fused them together." He looked around at all of us. "This fixed a lot of problems that the time agency had been worried about for a long time. It was the only solution that would have worked, so we're grateful for it. But it also created some new… complications." He seemed to look particularly at Molly as he said this.

"Thirty-six people were only in one of the dimensions. Those were the thirty-six kids from the plane. Gavin, Daniella, in your dimension of time, the plane landed in the twenty-first century, Angela saw it, she and her fellow airport employees got all of you off the plane, and then you got adopted by your respective families. In the _other_ dimension, though, the plane was never seen by any airport employees in the twenty-first century. The parents who adopted children from the plane in your dimension either didn't adopt any children, or adopted different children at different times."

Slowly, things were starting to make sense. In my dimension, my parents had adopted me. In the other dimension, they'd adopted Molly. And then the dimensions had combined.

Was there a way to un-combine them?

JB looked at Gavin's family. "Danes family," he said. "In the dimension where the plane landed in the twenty-first century, you adopted Gavin. You were happy, because you finally had a child, and you were busier than most first-time parents, because of Gavin's hemophilia. You decided one child was enough, and did not register with any more adoption agencies or try to become pregnant.

"In the other dimension, the one where Gavin was never in this time period, you still registered with the adoption agency, but nothing came of it. Eventually, you became pregnant with Carter, and you unregistered with the adoption agency. You had Carter, and then two years later you had Callie.

"Gavin grew up as an only child in his dimension. Carter and Callie grew up having each other as siblings, but nobody else. Jeremiah and Cindy, you remember having all three of them as your kids from the start, because you were in both dimensions. But Gavin does not remember Carter and Callie, and they do not remember him. Because they lived their entire lives in separate dimensions, never meeting each other, until time fused back together."

Now JB turned to my parents. "It's the same with you. In one dimension, you adopted Daniella. In the other dimension, Daniella wasn't there. You had to wait a little longer before the adoption agency found a baby for you, but eventually you adopted Molly. The two of you, Mark and Diane, were in both dimensions, so you remember always having both daughters. But Daniella was only present in one dimension, so she doesn't remember having Molly as a sister. And Molly was only present in your family in the other dimension, so she doesn't remember Daniella."

"Molly's _our_ daughter," Gavin's uncle said fiercely.

"Yes," JB agreed. "In one of the dimensions. Rick and Sue, in the dimension where Jeremiah and Cindy adopted Gavin, you saw how happy they were once they'd adopted him, and it made you think about adopting a child as well. So you registered with an adoption agency and adopted Molly.

"In the other dimension, Jeremiah and Cindy never adopted anyone, so you never started thinking about adopting a child yourselves. And by the time they had Carter and Callie, you were busy with your careers and had decided not to have children. Molly was adopted by the McCarthys in that dimension."

Nobody said a word. I wasn't even sure whether everyone was still breathing.

"So," JB continued. "Jeremiah and Cindy, Rick and Sue, Mark and Diane. You were all in both dimensions. You remember having all your children, ever since their births or adoptions. Gavin and Daniella, you were only ever in one of the dimensions, so you remember being only children." He paused.

"Molly, like all the adults, was present in both dimensions. But she was adopted by the Rousseaus in one dimension, and the McCarthys in the other. So she has two full sets of completely different memories from the first ten years of her life."

Still nobody said anything. Then Gavin's aunt said, in a broken voice, "But—you're going to fix it, aren't you? You're going to split time again, and make things the way they used to be?"

JB looked at her sympathetically, and then around at all of us. "I understand it's going to be a difficult adjustment. I'm not sure if this is any comfort, but you're not the only families going through something like this. Almost three-fourths of the families who adopted kids from the plane are experiencing things like this right now—having kids from two different dimensions who don't know each other. And about half of the families now have to deal with owning and living in two separate houses, because Gary and Hodge messed around with time to ensure all thirty-six families would end up in the same general area, so they could come back and try to take all the kids again. Gary and Hodge are not a danger anymore," he added reassuringly. "There is no possibility that they will be able to come back and take any of the kids. But… in answer to your question, Sue, things are not going to go back to how they used to be. The merging of the dimensions fixed all the problems that had been created by the plane landing in the twenty-first century—problems such as Carter and Callie not being born, for example. And even if we wanted to try to re-split it—which all the time experts agree would be disastrous and most likely destroy time forever—we couldn't. Even with time travel, there are some things that just aren't possible."

I remembered being told that by a different time agent, right after we'd failed to save the rest of my twentieth-century family.

"So… what are we going to do about Molly?" Dad asked, his voice trembling. I'd never heard my dad's voice tremble before.

"That's up to you," said JB softly. "Up to you and Diane, and Rick and Sue. She legally belongs to all of you."


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue

It's spring now. I haven't time traveled since November, and this time I probably really won't time travel ever again. Jonah told me that the time agency decided it was too dangerous, allowing the possibility of going back into the past and changing things. So they sealed off time travel. I don't know exactly what that means—I got the feeling when he was telling me about it that it didn't mean time travel was completely impossible, the way Gary and Hodge had wanted to make it. But it isn't something they do anymore.

Speaking of Jonah, I've still been hanging out with him and Katherine and Chip and Gavin—as well as with Jonah and Katherine's new brother, Jordan. It was kind of strange getting used to him at first, but now he's just one of us. He even has his own set of time-travel experiences.

I lean back on the couch in the living room and think about life before time travel. It all seems so weird now—like part of a different lifetime. And I guess maybe it sort of was part of a different lifetime—the lifetime before the dimensions merged. I was so young back then. So ignorant.

And now it's like I've been three different people. First I was Daniella. Then I was Anastasia. Now I'm someone else. Maybe a Daniella 2.0?

The doorbell rings, and I bolt upright and scramble to go answer it. I stub my toe on the corner of the couch and limp the rest of the way, narrowly avoiding crashing into the coffee table. I remind myself of a one-legged kangaroo. I laugh because in some ways, I am still the old Daniella, and in some ways, I am still Anastasia. Some things never change.

I open the door. "We're here!" Molly sings out, enveloping me in a bone-crushing hug. "And Aunt Cindy brought an Easter cake!"

"Molly, where's your stuff for this week?" I ask. "Your schoolbooks? Your backpack?"

"Dad's got it," says Molly. "My other dad, I mean, not our dad."

"As long as someone has it," I say. "Because you are _not_ missing a week with us!"

It was hard for me to adjust to having a sister at first—a sister living in the same house. But the more time goes on, the more I appreciate my different kinds of siblings. My biological brother and sister, who don't live with me but who I share tons of memories with, and my non-biological sister, who I don't have a lot of memories with yet, but we're working on it. And I'd say we've become pretty close in the past few months, even with Molly only spending every other week with my family. She confessed to me back in February that she'd always wanted a big sister. And, remembering all the fun I always had growing up with Maria and Tatiana and even Olga, I'm determined to be that kind of sister for Molly.

I step out of the way and let Molly walk past me, followed by Carter and Callie, Mr. and Mrs. Rousseau, Mr. and Mrs. Danes, and finally Gavin. Gavin's carrying a basketball.

"Isn't basketball season over?" I ask, playfully trying to swat the ball out of his hands.

"Yeah. It's been over for a while. I like to practice when I can, though. I need to _somehow_ catch up with Jonah and Jordan and Chip."

"Well, this is only your first year playing, right? They've been playing for years. In their driveways, at least."

"Yeah, but still." Gavin grins at me. "Okay, maybe I just like actually being _allowed_ to play basketball now. My mom's really loosened up. She even joined in a game of flag football with me and Carter and Callie the other day, and didn't spend the whole time worrying her head off about me getting hurt!"

"Nice," I say. I'm about to shut the door when I see a minivan pull up in our driveway. I hold the door open and Gavin and I both stand there to greet Angela, Hadley, Maria, Leo, Gregory, and Henry. I can't believe how big Gregory and Henry are getting—they're almost nine months old. I was apprehensive at first when Angela and Hadley adopted them—after all, before they were turned back into babies, they were Gary and Hodge. But I know from experience that Gregory and Henry will grow up with no memory whatsoever of the people they used to be, and I know Angela and Hadley will raise them to be completely different people this time around.

"I know I just saw you at church this morning, but I have to give you another hug," Maria tells me, smiling and leaning over to hug me. She hugs Gavin too, and then leans back and looks at both of us, sadness coming into her eyes. "I can't help thinking about Easter back in Russia."

I nod. I've been thinking about that too. "Like last Easter, when we couldn't go to our regular church because we were being kept in the house, but we still had the services at home?"

"And when we were all sick with the measles, and Mama took such good care of us…" There is a wistful look in Maria's eyes.

"Easter is different here," Leo notes. "People do not fast, and there are not as many church services, and some people do not even go to church."

"It is different," I agree. I don't tell him that up until this year, my family never went to church on Easter. This year I decided I wanted to go, and I persuaded my parents to come with me. They were surprised at the request, but liked the idea. And I think they're happy we went.

"It's different from the last Easter I celebrated too," says Hadley, pulling a plastic Easter egg out of his pocket. "I still can't get over the plastic eggs!"

"Why, how do people celebrate Easter in the future?" Gavin asks curiously.

"Do you really think I can tell you that?" asks Hadley, but there's a twinkle in his eye.

Sometimes I wonder how Hadley can stand living in the twenty-first century instead of whatever time period it was when he lived in the future. It must be such a downgrade of technology, and so weird to know about all sorts of things that are going to happen before other people do… but the reason he moved to our time period back in December was so that he could marry Angela, so I guess he has what's most important.

Family. That's what's important, and that's what we all have, even though our family structures have changed so much in not even half a year.

I smile as I lead everyone into the house. "Mom! Dad!" I call. "Everyone's here!"

Molly takes her backpack from Mr. Rousseau, or "Uncle Rick" as I've begun calling him, and runs upstairs to drop it off in her room. Even after all this time, I can't help being a little amazed at how well everything worked out. Back when the dimensions first merged, my parents technically owned two houses—our Ohio house, from my dimension, and our old Michigan house, from the dimension where they had Molly. We all decided it made the most sense to live in the Ohio house—that was where I was supposed to be by then, and it was close to Molly's other family, which would make the shared custody arrangement a lot easier. Mom and Dad already had their jobs at the Battelle Institute, so they just quit—or re-quit, I guess—their jobs in Michigan. Everything was a little jumbled and confused at first, with so many people trying to fit two sets of memories together in a way that made sense, but by now everything's going smoothly. And, like JB said, it's not like we're the only family that had to go through this. Chip had to deal with having two houses for a while (but no new siblings), until his parents finally decided to get rid of the old one in Illinois. And I've talked to a lot of the other kids from the plane—we've had a couple reunions since November—and some of them have had to deal with even crazier stuff. I'm happy about how things worked out for me and my family. And seriously. What are the odds of Molly having the same first name in both dimensions? And of Molly being my sister _and_ the cousin of Gavin, who's my biological brother? It's easy to believe that somehow, this is how things were always meant to be.

Molly runs back down the stairs, announcing, "Molly Rousseau-McCarthy is officially ready for dinner!" Mom and Dad take a break from greeting everybody else to hug Molly and ask her about her week. And then dinner is ready, and we all sit down to eat.

Maria says a blessing, one that we used to say all the time during my life as Anastasia. Listening to the familiar blessing reminds me of times gone by, but not in a sad way this time. Instead, I picture Mama, Papa, Olga, and Tatiana, up in heaven with our servants and friends from Russia, smiling down at all of us. I think, if they can see us down here, they're happy about where Maria and Gavin and I ended up. Happy about who we are now. Happy that we got a second chance at life.

And I am happy too. I look around at my family—my parents, my two sisters, my brother, and all the people who feel like aunts and uncles and cousins to me now: Gavin's parents, the Rousseaus, Angela, Hadley, Leo, Gregory, Henry, Carter, and Callie. Family doesn't have to mean you're related by blood. It doesn't have to mean you grew up together, or that you live together, or even that you've known each other for a particularly long time.

I've known a lot of different definitions for the word "family" over the past five months. I've lived them. But now I know what family really means.

Family means love.


End file.
